The collapse of a refractory arch in a glass melting furnace at 1500°C is not a random accident, but the result of a complex interaction between chemical degradation and thermal fatigue. Through a 3D analysis with ANSYS Thermal, the evolution of stress in silica bricks has been modeled, revealing how corrosion by alkaline vapors from molten glass reduced the effective cross-section of the material, accelerating structural failure under heating and cooling cycles.
3D Modeling of Corrosion and Fatigue with ANSYS Thermal 🔥
The study relied on a digital twin of the furnace created in Revit (BIM), where metrology data obtained with GOM Inspect was integrated to capture the actual deformed geometry of the dome. In ANSYS Thermal, boundary conditions were applied simulating 500 operating cycles, combining a chemical diffusion model for silica degradation with a thermomechanical fatigue analysis. The results showed that the critical zone was located at the crown of the arch, where the thickness loss due to corrosion exceeded 20%, generating tensile stresses that exceeded the rupture limit of the refractory material during a rapid cooling cycle.
Lessons for Predictive Maintenance Programming 🛠️
The 3D analysis demonstrated that the failure was not due to a specific error in maintenance scheduling, but to the absence of a predictive model integrating the chemical corrosion rate with thermal fatigue. The simulation revealed that standard maintenance cycles ignored the non-linear acceleration of degradation once a damage threshold was exceeded. Integrating these models into a BIM digital twin would allow dynamically adjusting inspection intervals, preventing collapses by accurately predicting the residual service life of the arch based on real-time 3D metrology data.
How chemical corrosion induced by alkaline vapors from molten glass influences the acceleration of thermal fatigue in refractory bricks of a furnace arch
(PS: Material fatigue is like yours after 10 hours of simulation.)