Paper Title
A Novel Approach to Evaluate The Heating Performance of A Radio Frequency Oven

Abstract
Heating with radio frequency is an alternative thermal process which is usually efficient and rapid compared to conventional thermal processes. A well-designed RF heating unit plays a major role on the efficiency of the process. Different parameters effect the heating performance of the system such as dielectric and geometrical properties of the material, electrode gap and so on. Designing the heating unit of the system for a specified material, one should measure the effectiveness of the proposed parameters. In this study, a heating performance criterion, called heating performance index, was proposed. This is a practical equation which can be applied easily to the experimental results. This index was applied to different sets of experiments and the effect of material thickness, electrode gap and the position of the material within the RF cavity was determined. Keywords- radiofrequency; heating performance index; temperature uniformity.