Thermal Analysis of Electromagnetic Induction Heating for Cylinder-Shaped Objects.

Induction heating is one of the cleanest and most efficient methods for heating materials, utilizing electromagnetic fields induced through AC electric current. This article reports an analytical solution for transient heat transfer in a three-dimensional (3D) cylindrical object under induction heating. A simplified form of Maxwell's equations is solved to determine the heat generation inside the cylinder by calculating the current density distribution within the body. The temperature within the solid is found from the solution of the unsteady heat equation based on Green's function. Owing to multiple spatial dimensions and time, a separation of variables technique is used to find Green's function. In addition, an innovative algorithm is proposed to take care of the variable material properties in analytical treatment. The analytical solution for temperature is verified with the data obtained from experiments for identical operating conditions. The analytical solution is used to study the impact of heat transfer coefficient and input AC current frequency and amplitude during transient heat diffusion. Our analytical solution suggests that the temperature-dependent material properties significantly affect the thermal response within the solid. Unlike many other conventional heating methods, the thermal boundary condition changes with time in induction heating, which makes our solution much more challenging.