Stress Corrosion Cracking Analysis of a Hot Blast Stove Shell with an Internal Combustion Chamber

Abstract

The stress corrosion cracking during the operation of the internal combustion hot blast stove was analysed. The computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis models were established to analyse the temperature, stress and other variables related to the condensation of the water and acids. The corrosion characteristics of condensation of acid and the stress corrosion cracking of the metallic shell of the hot blast stove during the operation were predicted by applying the fluid temperature and mapping it to the solid temperature. The stress corrosion cracking surface mobility mechanism was adopted and modified with a weight concept to consider the effect of the acid condensation and its concentration. The regions that have higher crack propagation rates were analysed. The influence of the increase in the blast temperature on the crack propagation rate was studied with the increase in the blast temperature by 45 K and 90 K from the reference blast temperature. The maximum temperature of the refractory linings was 1847 K in the on-gas period, and the maximum change in the shell temperature was 5.2 K when the blast temperature was increased by 90 K. The maximum crack propagation rate for the reference blast temperature was evaluated as 7.61×10−7 m/s. The maximum value of the crack propagation rate was increased by 16.7% when the blast temperature increased by 90 K. The conical region was found to have higher crack propagation rates, which means that the conical region should be the region of interest for managing the internal combustion hot blast stoves.