A Steel
Rolling Firm

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of Supporting Finger in Energy Optimizing Furnace (EOF)

Client:

Steel Rolling Firm

The Challenge:

An energy optimizing furnace, as the name implies, optimizes the available flue gas energy to preheat the scrap material, which is used to produce the iron billets in steel rolling industry. Pre-heating of scrap material is done inside the furnace with the help of the supporting finger. The objective of this paper was to analyze the supporting finger for its probable frequency of failure using finite element analysis.

The Solution:

The present work on this finger is to focus on the failure mode by puncturing the bottom of the supporting finger at short intervals. A static structural finite element technique is incorporated here to optimize the design against the influencing parameters such as scrap load as well as thermal load due to furnace. The structural analysis is carried out for analyzing deformation properties, stress distribution of the finger, and thermal analysis for the temperature distribution. From the finite element analysis we can obtain the information of finger for redesign and optimization of supporting finger.