Numerical investigation for the effect of shapes and arrangement of inerts on coke strength

In this study, the effect of inert shapes and arrangements on coke strength is numerically investigated using a homogenization method. In the analysis, coke texture is assumed to be composed of active component and inert, with disregard to the existence of pores. The stress analyses for tensile test and the thermal stress analysis are carried out for three cases of inert shapes and arrangement. In Case 1, the round shape inerts with the same diameters are regularly arranged in the coke. In Case 2, complex irregular shape inerts are irregularly arranged in the coke by expanding randomly arranged round shape inerts and joining the over-lapping of inerts. In Case 3, the inerts in Case 2 are converted into the other inerts with round shapes retaining the area of inerts and then randomly rearranged in the coke texture. From the stress analyses of tensile test, the maximum stress in Case 1 shows the lowest for all the analytical cases. In addition, the analytical results for tensile test show that the load carrying capacity of inerts depends on the arrangement of inerts. As a result, the coke with regular arrangement of equal sized inerts is expected for the improvement of coke strength. From the thermal stress analyses, on the other hand, the analytical results shows that the maximum stress occurs in the region where inerts are close to each other. Therefore, it is important to prevent inerts from being close to each other in the coke texture in order to produce the coke with high strength.