Glass
Glass manufacturing is complex and resource-intensive — making it ideally suited to ongoing process improvements supported by engineering simulation. Software and simulation technologies from ANSYS can help glassmakers to model the many physical, chemical and thermal processes that occur during glass production and forming — enabling meaningful improvements in process efficiency, product quality and overall cost.
Software from ANSYS can model equipment used at every stage in the glassmaking process, including furnaces, melters, refiners, forehearths and spout bowls. Operations such as drawing, pressing, blowing and fiber production can be optimized via ANSYS software.
By modeling and enhancing glassmaking operations at every stage, ANSYS customers have increased their efficiency and productivity, reduced manufacturing costs, and minimized emissions and other environmental impacts.
Supported by the advanced capabilities of ANSYS, engineering simulation can drive enhancements in these and many other aspects of glass manufacturing.
Single burner multiphase combustion simulation results, mass fraction of glass and gases
Courtesy 2008 Owens Corning Science & Technology, LLC and the Gas Technology Institute.
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Air Bubbling 
Software from ANSYS can optimize the performance of air bubblers, improving circulation patterns and enhancing heat transfer rates. The technology can be used to model heat, mass and momentum transfer, taking into account such factors as bubble size, bubble rise velocity, frequency of bubbling, bubbler height and thermophysical properties of air and glass melt.
Batch Melting
The powerful capabilities of ANSYS solutions can optimize batch melting, accounting for both radiative and convective heat caused by the combustion gases above as well as convective heat transfer from below. Batch velocities are explicitly calculated, not assumed as constants.
Combustion & Refiners
Software from ANSYS models the coupling between the combustion space and the refiner using two distinct submodels. The combustion space is first calculated with a convective boundary condition, then the temperature profile on the bottom boundary is exported and applied to the refiner glass surface. The resulting heat flux on the surface is then applied back to the bottom boundary of the combustion space, completing an iteration of coupling.
Electric Boosting
Solutions from ANSYS can improve the contributions of electric boosting, which enhances glass-melt circulation and augments heat transfer from the combustion space to the molten glass. ANSYS technology simulates the effects of electric boosting by solving the real and imaginary parts of the electric potential, then coupling the resulting Joulean heat dissipation as a source term to the energy equation of the glass melt.
Glass Fiber Drawing & Spinning
ANSYS tools provide the power to model interactions between multiple fibers and air flows during these complex processes. The technology can simulate steady-state melt fiber spinning with a cross-stream quenching airflow. It also can calculate diameter, temperature and velocity of fibers as functions of distance from the nozzles.
Glass Blowing
The ANSYS portfolio can model complex glass blowing processes, helping manufacturers understand such subtleties as the combination of free-surface deformation under the combined effect of gravity and blowing air, the cooling process due to the action of the surrounding air and contact with the mold, and mechanical and thermal detection of contact between deforming glass and the mold.
Glass Pressing
Engineering simulation via ANSYS can illuminate the complexities of the glass pressing process, including free-surface deformation under the combined effects of the motion of different solid devices, cooling process, and mechanical and thermal detection of the contact between deforming glass and all molds.
Temperature map in glass pressed dish
Product Forming
Software from ANSYS supports the modeling and optimization of the many stages involved in product forming, including melting raw materials in the glass furnace, conveying glass, gob forming and falling, and final forming processes such as pressing, blowing and compression molding.