Coupled Electromagnetic and Heat Transfer Simulations for RF Applicator Design for Efficient Heating of Materials

C. Thiagarajan[1], J. Anto[2]
[1]ATOA Scientific Technologies Pvt Ltd, Whitefield, Bangalore, Karnataka India.
[2]Researcher
Published in 2012

Conventional heating of material wastes energy during heating due to inherent radiation, conduction and convection based heating mechanism. Alternate efficient heating methods are actively researched for improved efficiency. Radio frequency based electromagnetic heating is increasingly used for efficient heating in place of conventional heating. This requires coupling of electromagnetic and heat transfer for performance evaluation of an RF applicator. A dielectric disk is considered for heating performance evaluation. The methodology, material properties used and simulation results are reported. The uniformity of heat application or electromagnetic energy distribution is used as metric to evaluate the efficiency. The virtual design and heating results are reported. The multiphysics coupling and parametric modeling capability of COMSOL is highlighted. Typical RF applicator in Figure1.