A genetic algorithm based heat transfer analysis of a bloom re-heating furnace

A heat transfer model, coupled with an optimization scheme has been presented in designing a re-heating furnace typically used in the integrated steel plants. Numerical solution of the pertinent differential equations were coupled with the optimal settings of the burner and the velocity of the bloom, using biologically inspired genetic algorithms (GAs) and differential evolution (DE), which led to optimized temperature profiles satisfying bloom dropout temperature constraints. The ease of application and efficiency of solution methodology demonstrated in this paper suggest further application of GAs and DE to more complex engineering design problems.