Firing technology restoration of an ancient egg-shaped ceramic kiln based on refiring experiments and numerical simulation

Abstract

This study presents a simulation-based approach to reconstructing the firing technology of the Sihe egg-shaped kiln in Jingdezhen, China, combining numerical simulation with refiring experiments. An unsteady heat transfer and flow model was established and validated against measurements from a reconstructed kiln. Taking the qualified product rate and energy consumption per qualified product as evaluation indices, four key restoration parameters were analyzed through an L 16 (4 4 ) orthogonal design and further optimized by a PSO-BP surrogate coupled with NSGA-II and the entropy Weight-TOPSIS method. The results show that sagger packing density has the greatest influence on product quality, while kiln head height most strongly affects energy consumption. The optimization predicts an increase in the qualified product rate from 48.32% to 55.54% and a reduction in energy consumption per qualified product from 1.986 to 1.731 GJ/m 2 ; these improvements have not yet been confirmed by refiring the optimized kiln. This study provides a quantitative basis for restoring the firing techniques of ancient ceramic kilns and demonstrates the value of numerical simulation in ceramic archaeology.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Case Studies in Thermal Engineering, 2026 · DOI ↗