An investigation on the effect of varying the load, mesh and simulation parameters in microwave heating applications

The paper attempts to provide a generic proposal on the influence of various microwave load parameters based on results accumulated during an investigation using a specific microwave multimode heating cavity configuration. The results have been obtained by numerical analysis using the Finite Element Method within a 3-D environment. The load parameters considered were dielectric constant, loss factor, load thickness and load position. Load material properties are typical of those used in industrial relevant applications. Of the four load parameters investigated, the configuration with a high loss factor was seen to dominate the load impact regardless of load thickness, load position or dielectric constant. With decreasing loss factor or increasing load thickness, the influence of the dielectric constant increases. Minor adjustments in the load position (10%) is generally seen to have minimal impact for all load properties considered. The paper also investigates the numerical impact of varying load properties. As the dielectric constant increases, which requires a higher number of mesh elements, so does the average iterations per numerical cycle. The number of numerical cycles and time to reach a convergence is also seen to be inversely proportional to the load loss factor.