Modeling of Microwave Heating of a Rotating Object in Domestic Oven

John Diamond Raj

1
, Sohan Birla
2
, Krishnamoorthy Pitchai
2
, Jeyamkondan Subbiah
2*
and David Jones
2
1
Indian Institute of Crop Processing Technology, Thanjavur, India,
2
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
*Corresponding author: 212, Chase Hall, University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE 68583, [email protected]

Abstract: Modeling of the microwave heating
is vital to understand heating characteristics of
food in domestic microwave ovens. A model was
developed to study the feasibility of coupling
rotation of the load along with heating in a
microwave oven. The model was validated using
a 1 % gellan gel cylindrical for 30 s heating in a
1100 W microwave oven. The temperature
profiles (patterns of hot and cold spots) of the
simulations showed good agreement with the
experimental profiles. Simulation of microwave
heating of a non-axisymmetric rotating load
revealed that the COSMOL softwares moving
mesh module does not solve electric field at each
different location but only at the initial position
and moves the values to new locations. Further
improvements are needed in the software to
simulate realistic scenarios.
Keywords: microwave heating, heating
uniformity, dielectric properties, heat transfer
1. Introduction
Microwave ovens are known for their uneven
heating, which can result in both thermal
runaways and cold spots. The uneven microwave
heating can lead to serious health hazards as a
meal can contain raw or partially cooked
ingredients which may have pathogens. An
understanding of the heating patterns can help to
design food which heat more evenly in
microwave ovens. Therefore modeling of
microwave heating is highly desirable.
Modeling of microwave heating of foods in
domestic microwave ovens has been the target of
a lot of research work in the last few decades.
Accurate modeling of microwave heating
requires taking into account of rotation of
turntable and object, which has not been the
focus of much research.
Finite Difference Time Domain method was
used in the simulation of rotation of a square
object in a microwave oven by Kopyt and
Celuch (2003). A transient geometry condition
was used to simulate rotation of the object. This
involved changing the geometry to place the
heated object in new positions to simulate
rotation. At each time step, the object was
moved by a user defined angle and a new
simulation was run. This meant that a new mesh
had to be created at each of the transient
positions, which can be very memory intensive.
Further, the object was assumed to move
instantly at the end of a time step to a new
position and remain stationary at the new
location for the duration of the entire time step.
Moreover, the method involved some post
processing to bring the values saved by the
different simulations together.
The role of a carousel in improving heating
uniformity of a food (potato) in a microwave
oven was studied by Geedipalli et al (2007). A
finite element software, ANSYS was used for
solving the electromagnetic field and FIDAP,
another finite element software, was used for the
simulation of heat transfer. One-way coupling
was used, assuming that the materials dielectric
properties are independent of temperature. This
assumption does not hold when a material
undergoes phase change.
The eects of turntable rotation and natural
convection, power sources, and aspect ratio of
container on the temperature proles were
studied by Chatterjee et al. (2007) for a liquid
load using Finite volume method based
FLUENT software. The study considered a
rotating load placed in a radially symmetrical
electromagnetic field. However a domestic
microwave oven has a varying, highly uneven
electromagnetic field dependent on a number of
factors such as oven geometry, load size,
waveguide etc.
COMSOL has been shown to be able to model
coupled electromagnetic and heat transfer
equations (COMSOL, 2011). A library model
was seen to be able to simulate coupled
electromagnetic field and rotation in an electric
motor using the moving mesh module. This
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the 2011 COMSOL Conference in Boston
prompted an attempt to solve simultaneous
electromagnetic and heat transfer equations for a
rotating object in a microwave oven.
The main objective of this study was to explore
the feasibility of simulating a rotating object in a
microwave oven using three-way coupling of
electromagnetic, heat transfer and moving mesh.
The simulated results were compared with
experimental heating profiles of a model food.
2. Model Development
2.1. Governing Equations
Electromagnetic field (E) at any point is
governed by set of Maxwells equations. In the
wave form combined equation is expressed as
(COMSOL, 2011):

r
-
( )-
f
c


(
r
-i

) (1)
where f is frequency (2.45 GHz), c is the speed
of light, and
r
and
r
are dielectric constant,
permeability, and permittivity respectively.
EM power dissipation density (Q) is the function
of frequency and loss factor (

) and electric
filed strength.
f
o




(2)
Dissipated power is diffused in the material and
governed by Fouriers heat transfer Eq.
C
p
d
dt
T) + Q (3)
where k is thermal conductivity, C
p
is specific
heat capacity and is the density of material.

2.1.1. Moving Mesh
The effect of rotation of the turntable and gel
was modeled using the Moving mesh (Arbitrary
Langrangian-Eulerian, ALE) module available in
the COMSOL 4.2. Moving mesh module had all
the boundaries set to zero displacement. The air
domain was set to free displacement whereas
turntable and gel domains were prescribed the
following mesh deformation in x and y
directions.
dx cos( N t) - sin( N t) - (3)
dy sin( N t) cos( N t) - (4)
where N is in rps (0.01), X and Y are the
coordinates of the original position of the
rotating object, dx and dy refer to the change in
position of the rotating object in the x and y
direction.
The load domain (gel) and the turntable were
rotating at 6 rpm.

2.2. Geometric Model
A geometric model was created for a 1100 W
Panasonic oven (Fig.1) (Model No. NN-
SD767W). Microwaves are fed into the cavity
through a waveguide located on the right side of
the cavity wall. The magnetron was included as a
coaxial microwave power source as shown in Fig
1. Output power for the magnetron was set as
900 W, which was determined using the IEC
Method (IEC, 2006).

Fig 1. Geometric model of the microwave oven

2.3. Meshing Scheme
It is very important to carry out mesh
independent study to find out optimum mesh size
for the given model. Meshing of the domain was
done using the rule that 10 linear elements were
needed per wavelength (COMSOL, 2011). Six-
mm maximum element in the gel domain was
found to be the optimal mesh size. The
completed mesh for the entire domain consisted
of 111,325 tetrahedral elements.

2.4. Solver
Frequency-Transient solver was used for the
solving coupled Eqs 1-3. The frequency of the
oven was assigned as 2.45 GHz and the
simulation was run for 30 s in steps of 2 seconds.
Segregated solver steps were used for calculation
of electromagnetic field wave (emw),
temperature (T) and movement of the gel moving
mesh (ale). The model used an iterative GMRES
solver for emw whereas direct solver was used
for T and ale.
2.5. Assumptions
The following assumptions were made in the
simulation.
1. The walls of the oven are perfect electrical
conductors and reflect all of the incident
energy.
2. The heat transfer coefficient at the air
material interface was assumed to be
constant at 10 W/m
2
K.
3. The mass transfer is negligible and can be
ignored.
4. The initial temperature of the gel, air and
turntable domain was assumed to be uniform
at 20

C.

2.6. Material Properties
Temperature dependent dielectric properties of
1% gellan gel were measured using an open
ended coaxial probe method. Table 1 shows the
material properties used in the simulation.

Table 1. Material properties used in model
2.7. Experimental Validation
The validation of the model was carried out by
heating a food analogue, 1 % gellan gel (Kelco,
Atlanta, GA) cylindrical load (80 mm x 50 mm).
The gel was prepared by heating 10 g of the
gellan gel powder in 1 liter of water. On the
temperature reaching 80 C, 1.6 g of Calcium
chloride di hydrate (CaCl
2
2H
2
O) was added.
The liquid was poured into a container of
diameter 80 mm and height 50 mm and allowed
to solidify. The gel was cooled to 20 C and
removed from the container for use.
The gel was placed at the center of the oven
turntable. The gel was heated on the rotating
turntable for 30s. Fiber optic sensors (FISO
Technologies, Quebec, Canada) were used to
record the transient temperature of the gel at
different locations (Fig 3). Immediately upon
completion of microwave heating, thermal
images of the top, middle and bottom layer of the
heated gel was recorded using a thermal imaging
camera (ThermaCam SC-640, FLIR Systems,
Boston, MA). The three profiles were compared
with the simulated results.
3. Results and Discussion
Fig. 2 shows the comparison of simulated and
experimental thermal profiles at the top, middle
and the bottom layer after 30 s of microwave
heating. The simulated temperature profiles
showed good agreement with the experimental
profiles. Fig 4 shows the comparison of
simulated and experimental temperature at two
different points. The simulated values over
predicted the temperatures at all the points
monitored. This can be corrected by finding the
correct power output of the magnetron which is a
strong function of load size and shape. We used
magnetron power output based on energy
absorbed in 1000 ml water load (IEC 2006)
whereas the gel volume was 250 ml. Further the
transient temperature data showed a period of
constant temperature at the beginning of the
heating cycle, due to the come up period of the
magnetron, which is about 2.5 s. This can be
corrected by using a ramp function in the
magnetron power input. Interestingly the
simulated transient temperature at all the
monitored points except the center of the load, in
the simulation shows a cyclic pattern of
increasing temperature, followed by a flatter
Properties Gellan gel Glass
Specific heat,
J/kg/K
4160 0.55
Density, kg/m
3
1010 2050
Thermal
conductivity,
W/mK
0.53 0.1
Dielectric
constant
-0.23T+81.103 4
Loss factor

0
temperature profile. This is attributed to the
movement of the points through various hot and
cold spots in the oven. Absence of such cyclic
temperature profile in the experimental values
could be attributed to the thermal lag of the fiber-
optic sensors which even out the time variations.
A similar trend was observed by Geedipalli et al
(2007) at points away from the center of the
load. Center point transient temperature is not
affected by rotation as it does not move and
experience a varying EM field.

Simulated Experimental

T
o
p




M
i
d
d
l
e


B
o
t
t
o
m




Fig 3. Position of the sensors

Fig 4. Simulated and experimental temperature
profiles at point 1 is in the left top corner
and point 2 is at center


Fig 5. Normalized electric field, V/m in the gel
center cross section at different heating times
Fig 5 shows the normalized electric field
visualized at different time steps. As the electric
field was not changing at various time steps the
moving mesh module was probably not solving
for each different position but determined the
electromagnetic field assuming the load was
stationary at one position. This was further
corroborated by simulating the gel cylinder kept
offset from the center of the turntable.

15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
0 10 20 30
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e
,

C


Time, s
Point 1 - EXP
Point 1 - SIM
Point 2 - EXP
Point 2 - SIM
Fig 2. Simulated and experimental temperature
profiles at three planes


5 s 10 s

20 s 30 s
10
10
40
25
50

Fig 6. Normalized electric field (V/m) in the
center cross section of gel load kept at different
places on turntable
When the cylinder was kept in center, rotation on
its own axis did not influence the electric field.
The field patterns remained same even after
rotation of the gel on the turntable. A slight
variation in the intensity of the pattern was seen
because of the changing temperature and the
temperature dependent properties of the load as
shown in Fig 5. However simulated electric field
using moving mesh did not show any change in
the pattern. Hence it was found that moving
mesh module does not really work for electric
field.
When the cylinder was kept offset from the
center of the turntable, moving mesh was
expected to simulate different electric field
patterns as the cylinder went through different
locations in the cavity; however that was not the
case. We simulated a series of EM simulation
with the gel at different positions and studied the
electric patterns. Fig 6 shows that at each
position the electric field patterns will be
different and their values change dramatically.
This study revealed that the software calculated
only the electric field for the initial location and
moved the values to new locations for
calculating temperature. This software glitch has
been communicated to the COMSOL R&D
personnel for fixing the issue. We have started
exploring MATLAB-COMSOL interface to
resolve this issue.
4. Conclusions
A simulation model was developed to study the
feasibility of coupling rotation of the load along
with microwave heating in a microwave oven.
The simulated results agreed well with the
experimental pattern with respect to hot and cold
spots. However the model over predicted the
temperature at all the points monitored.
Indication of the hot spots and cold spots could
help in food product development. The
electromagnetic field did not change with the
movement of the load to a new position. The
rotation effect applies only to the heat transfer.
Modeling of rotating object was limited to axi-
symmetrical objects kept in the center of the
turntable. The moving mesh model does not
work for simulating microwave heating of items
kept offset from the center as wells as non-axial
symmetrical objects. There is further
improvement needed in the software to simulate
realistic microwave heating scenarios.
5. References
Celuch, M. & Kopyt, P., FDTD modeling and
experimental verication of electromagnetic
power dissipated in domestic microwave
ovens. Journal of Telecommunications and
Information Technology. 59 65 (2003).
Chatterjee, S., Basak, T. and Das, S.K.
Microwave driven convection in a rotating
cylindrical cavity: A numerical study. J. Food
Engineering. 79(4), 1269 1279 (2007).
COMSOL, COMSOL user guide on RF module,
(2011).
Geedipalli, S.S.R, Rakesh, V. and Datta, A. K.
Modeling the heating uniformity contributed
by a rotating turntable in microwave ovens,
Journal of Food Engineering, 82, 359 - 368
(2007).
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
(2006). IEC Publication 60705:2006.
Household microwave ovens methods for
measuring performance. Geneva:
International Electrotechnical Commission.
6. Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the financial support provided
by the USDA CSREES NIFSI grant (Project
number: 2008-51110-04340).