In order to obtain the most uniform temperature of the load, heat transfer in heat treatment furnaces used in the steel industry was studied. Different two-equation turbulence models were compared with experimental results. The Realizable k-epsilon model, predicts the load center line temperature better than the other two models, and it agrees closer to the experimental data. Also, by considering the radiation effect in the numerical simulation, the results were improved by 33% compared with experimental data. Finally, from different configurations of the burners studied and the results showed that the best temperature uniformity would be achieved for the configuration when the burners were located in a three down-three up arrangement. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.