A novel algorithm approach for rapid simulated microwave heating of food moving on a conveyor belt

Abstract In the food processing of microwave heating, it is a very common method to increase the production efficiency of products by means of conveyor belts. However, due to complex mathematical modeling, it is still a problem for fast and efficient calculations of microwave heating of moving sample. In this work, a novel algorithm method is proposed to for rapid simulated microwave heating of food moving on a conveyor belt. The moving domain material is set as a function of space coordinates and time by introducing the implicit function and level set methods. The electromagnetic power density in the moving domain is extended back to the initial position to calculate the temperature distribution, which ensures the continuity and accuracy of the simulation. The calculation results show that compared with the conventional method, the calculation efficiency of the proposed method is improved by 572%. Moreover, the proposed method does not require mesh reconstruction, and the proposed method is also applicable to radio frequency moving heating. The feasibility and accuracy of the method were verified by experimentally measuring the temperature change.