Delivering Results Through Engineering Excellence
Engineering & Scientific
Innovations, Inc.
RADIANT
LOADING
Product Quality Due to Improper Radiant Loading
Many industrial processes experience product quality issues due to non-homogeneous radiant heating. Whether the process is baking of bread to curing of composite material’s, or from the drying of slurry mixtures to paint drying use non-contact radiant heating is a common heating method. Unfortunately, lack thermal uniformity and uneven temperature fields lead to unevenness in heating and a loss in efficiencies and poor product quality.
The Engineering & Scientific Innovations team was asked to evaluate this unit and found a less than uniform thermal source.
Heating non-uniformity is presented in Figure B.
Although radiant heating is non-contact the Engineering & Scientific Innovations team has shown that the resulting thermal field is highly dependent on the type of high intensity lamps utilized, the fixture design, and the surrounding environment.
Figure A is typical heating unit containing multiple high intensity halogen lamps and used for composite material heating studies.
Temperatures recorded away from the high intensity lamps (Figure C) show a quasi-linear decrease beyond 20 mm.