SiC-based refractory tiles are used to protect waterwall tubes used for energy recover in household waste furnaces1. The shape of these tiles for waste-to-energy facilities is complex with thickness variations, bevelled parts,... Due to their complexity, heterogeneous local densities inside the tiles can appear during shaping that impact physical and mechanical properties. In these conditions, modelling of the tiles shape can give information on compaction behaviour of the material and predict the heterogeneous areas in the products. Raw refractory materials for waste-to-energy facilities are composed of SiC aggregates, clay and alumina powders. Before sintering, this material can be classified as granular material and behaviour models used in soil mechanics can be adopted. Modified Cam-Clay elastoplastic model has been selected to describe material behaviour during shaping.
Modified Cam-Clay parameters have been determined experimentally with shear triaxial tests and hydrostatic compression tests. A simplified geometrical shape has been simulated to validate parameters of behaviour law by comparing with experimental data. Next, these parameters have been used to model compaction of the tiles. From stress and density distributions, the results highlight the sensitive parts of tiles. As stress and density distributions depend on the tile shape, our model constitutes an interesting tool to optimize some tile features during manufacturing.
(1) Prigent, P.; Bouchetou, M. L.; Poirier, J.; de Bilbao, E.; Blond, E. Corrosion of Oxide Bonded Silicon Carbide Refractories by Molten Salts in Solid Waste-to-Energy Facilities. Ceramics International 2012, 38 (7), 5643–5649.
