Numerical analysis of heat flow in oxy-ethylene flame cutting of steel plate

Abstract

To manufacture a steel structure, in the first step, raw steel plate needs to be cut into proper sizes. Oxy-fuel flame is widely used in the cutting process due to its flexibility with respect to accessibility, plate thickness, cost, and material handling. However, the deformation caused by the cutting process frequently becomes a severe problem for the next process in the production of steel product. To decrease the deformation, the thermo-elasto-plastic behavior of the steel plate in the cutting process should be analyzed in advance. In this study, heat sources in oxy-ethylene flame cutting of steel plate were modeled first, and the heat flow in the steel plate was then analyzed by the models of the heat sources using a numerical simulation based on the finite element method. To verify the analysis by the numerical simulation including the models, a series of experiments were performed, and the temperature histories at several points on the steel plate during the cutting process were measured. Moreover, the predicted sizes of the heat-affected zone by the numerical simulations according to the variation in the cutting parameters were compared to the experimental results. The power functions of the relationship between the sizes of the heat-affected zone and cutting parameters were obtained by the recursion analysis using the correlation between the results and parameters. The results of the numerical simulation showed good agreement with those of the experiments, indicating that the proposed models of the heat sources and thermal analysis were feasible to analyze the heat flow in the steel plate during the cutting process.