Thermofluid-Solid Coupling Numerical Simulation Model of Blast Furnace Hearth Protection Measures

The blast furnace hearth is the key position to determine the life of the blast furnace. To ensure the safety of the blast furnace hearth, when serious local depression erosion occurs in the hearth lining, necessary protection measures are taken to prevent the depression erosion from continuing to expand. At present, the measures and strength of furnace protection are mostly selected according to the engineering experience, lacking feasible theoretical methods to predict the effect of furnace protection. In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical model of thermofluid-solid coupling of blast furnace hearth with mushroom-type depression erosion was established. Taking hearth temperature and thermal stress as the evaluation indexes, the effect of furnace protection measures was predicted and evaluated. The influence of molten iron flow and the formation of a solidified iron layer on the temperature distribution of the refractory material was considered in the numerical model. We have verified the calculation model, and the calculated temperature value was in good agreement with the measured value. In addition, the numerical model was used to analyze common furnace protection measures such as increasing the furnace cooling, closing the tuyere, and reducing the smelting strength. The research results of this paper have guiding significance to select the type and strength of the blast furnace protection measures.