With the objectives to prolong the blast furnace (BF) hearth life, reduce energy consumption and improve productivity, the interaction between the coke particles forming the dead man (DM), the hearth liquid flow and respective heat loads are investigated. Hearth conditions are stated by characterisation of actual BF hearths, water modelling, lining monitoring techniques and process data based expert systems. Innovative computer modelling using computational fluid dynamics, discrete element modelling and nodal wear modelling are developed to characterize the DM as a conglomeration of individual particles correlated and coupled with global process parameters and local wear factors.