By analyzing the characteristics of combustion and billet heating process, a 3-D transient computer fluid dynamic simulation system based on commercial software CFX4.3 and some self-programmed codes were developed to simulate the thermal process in a continuous heating furnace using high temperature air combustion technology. The effects of different switching modes on injection entrancement of multi burners, combustion and billet heating process in furnace were analyzed numerically, and the computational results were compared with on-site measurement, which verified the practicability of this numerical simulation system.The results indicate that the flow pattern and distribution of temperature in regenerative reheating furnace with partial same-side-switching combustion mode are favorable to satisfy the high quality requirements of reheating, in which the terminal heating temperature of billets is more than 1 460 K and the temperature difference between two nodes is not more than 10 K. But since the surface average temperature of billets apart from heating zone is only about 1 350 K and continued heating is needed in soaking zone, the design and operation of current state are still needed to be optimized to improve the temperature schedule of billet heating. The distribution of velocity and temperature in regenerative reheating furnace with same-side-switching combustion mode cannot satisfy the even and fast heating process. The terminal heating temperature of billets is lower than that of the former case by 30 K. The distribution of flow and temperature can be improved by using cross-switching combustion mode, whose terminal temperature of billets is about 1 470 K with small temperature difference within 10 K.