Thermal modeling and simulation applied to novel microwave hybrid heating process

Abstract Owing to the unique encouraging characteristics of microwave hybrid heating, primarily volumetric heating, and additional potentials such as being repeatable, quick, economical, and green; it has been utilized in various processing techniques. The efficient joining of mild steel pipes through microwave hybrid heating in a multimode applicator at 2.45 GHz and 900 W for an operational time of 480 s has already been performed. The modeling and simulation of the process have been performed in this research paper as the numerical analysis of the working environment is crucial for evaluating various aspects of a technique, decreases process-design cycle time, and found to be more economical than experimental trials. The numerical analysis provides in-depth insight-taking into consideration of the electromagnetic field distribution, its interaction with the materials, heat generation and transfer, along with the thermal analysis of the experimental assembly, in addition to the comprehensive parametric analysis. The numerical model of the assembled set-up was developed in order to simulate a real-life heating environment by solving electromagnetic and heat transfer equations and providing analytically predicted results with an accuracy of 3.75% against the experimental results. The analytical modeling and simulation have been strategically fragmented into three phases which are pre-processing, processing, and post-processing phase and elucidated extensively, providing a systematic working of the analytical model. This research will be utilized further in optimizing the microwave hybrid heating process in order to make it time-efficient and inexpensive for its applications to industrial environments.