In the present paper, computational fluid dynamic modelings were established to research a newly presented reheat steam temperature deviation solution on the basis of FLUENT 6.3.26 considering a 700 MWe tangentially fired pulverised-coal boiler, which confronted with severe flue gas and re-heat steam temperature deviation. The model was solidly validated by grid independence test and comparison with the experimental data obtained from a series of on-site measurements. Upon reliable validation, the model was further used to investigate the forming mechanism of re-heat steam temperature deviation as well as the influence of burner tilt angle on it. The conclusions mainly include (1) Residual swirling flow in the upper furnace caused the flue gas velocity and temperature deviations in crossover pass. For a typical anticlockwise tangential firing system, the flue gas velocity and temperature were lower in left part of crossover pass. The deviation of flue gas further generated the convective heat transfer imbalance of final re-heater, therefore, the temperature deviation of re-heat steam was severe. (2) Tilting the burner upward can effectively reduce the intensity of residual flow as well as the flue gas deviation degree. The + 11 degrees tilt angle of burner was relatively optimum considering the flue gas deviation and final re-heater overheating potential. Specifically, the intensity of residual swirl flow dropped 44% with burner tilting upward for + 11 degrees. Practical operation of boiler demonstrated that the reheat steam temperature deviation was reduced from 22 degrees C to 10 degrees C in this case. (3) When the tilt angle of additional air (AA) was bias set, the flow field of upper furnace was changed. Consequently, the residual swirl flow intensity and the flue gas deviation were reduced considerably. On-site measurements indicated that the combination of tilting burner upward for + 11 degrees and setting the bias of AA tilt angle for 100 can further reduce the re-heat steam temperature deviation to 4 degrees C. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.