Dynamic Current Distribution in the Electrodes of Submerged Arc Furnace Using Scalar and Vector Potentials

Abstract

This work presents computations of electric current distributions inside an industrial submerged arc furnace. A 3D model has been developed in ANSYS Fluent that solves Maxwell’s equations based on scalar and vector potentials approach that are treated as transport equations. In this paper, the approach is described in detail and numerical simulations are performed on an industrial three-phase submerged arc furnace. The current distributions within electrodes due to skin and proximity effects are presented. The results show that the proposed method adequately models these phenomena.