Improving Microwave Cooking Performance by Source Phase Shifting

Microwave cooking is rapid, but non-uniform. The effects of thermal non-uniformity are hot spots, cold spots and microbiological safety issues. An approach, based on phase shifting of two microwave generators, is proposed in order to attain a more uniform temperature distribution without the need of moving parts. In this paper 3D FEM electromagnetic and thermal analyses are combined with a metamodel into an optimization method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified on a test case model of practical interest.