Transient numerical simulation of a thermoelectrical problem in cylindrical induction heating furnaces (Q878094)

The paper is devoted to the modeling and numerical solution of thermoelectrical phenomena arising in axisymmetric induction heating systems. The authors introduce a coupled system of PDE in cylindrical coordinates, where the electromagnetic equations are expressed in terms of the magnetic vector potential and the heat transfer equation in terms of the enthalpy. An iterative algorithm for solving the finite element formulation of the problems is proposed. The numerical tests of the method for a one-dimensional problem with known analytic solution show a second order dependence of the \(L^2\) error on the mesh size. Some numerical results for an industrial furnace used in silicon purification are shown.