| Title |
A CFD-Free Equation-Based Temperature Estimation Model for Ceramic Sintering Using Real Process Data |
| Authors |
우승완(Seungwan Woo) ; 한윤수(Yoonsoo) ; 오현우() |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5573/ieie.2026.63.10.51 |
| Keywords |
Ceramic sintering process; Furnace simulation; Temperature prediction model; CFD-free approach |
| Abstract |
Advanced ceramic manufacturing comprises four principal processes?ball milling, spray drying, forming, and sintering?of which sintering determines product quality and energy efficiency. Although sintering follows a predefined temperature schedule, the heat that green bodies receive inside an electric furnace cannot be measured directly, and conventional CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analyses are too costly and complex for on-site use. This paper proposes an equation-based model that estimates the thermal behavior of ceramic sintering from real process data without CFD analysis. The model incorporates radiative, convective, and conductive terms and uses geometry data automatically generated from the furnace specifications, computing setter plate temperatures from heater distance, plate arrangement, and heat exchange between adjacent plates. Simulated plate temperatures decrease with distance from the heaters, and the group-wise distribution agrees with the thermal characteristics inside the furnace. For two validation datasets excluded from model calibration, the proposed model achieved an MAE of 2.63 °C and an RMSE of 3.00 °C, while the corresponding CFD results showed 2.73 °C and 3.76 °C, respectively. The computation time was approximately two minutes, compared with approximately three hours for CFD. A term-wise contribution analysis shows that radiative input increases after the exhaust port closes, while conduction between adjacent plates compensates for the position-dependent asymmetry of radiation, maintaining temperature uniformity. The model preserves physical consistency while remaining computationally efficient, providing a practical prediction method applicable to varied furnace configurations. Future work will extend it to process optimization and quality prediction using sintering quality data, and to three-dimensional simulation of the full setter plate stack. |