Parallel CFD analysis of conjugate heat transfer in a dry

type transformer.
Carlos Ortiz*, Adam Skorek*, Michel Lavoie**, Pierre Benard***
*Dpartement de gnie lectrique
**Dpartement de gnie logiciel
Universit du Qubec Trois-Rivires cole de Technologie Suprieure de Montral
Laboratoire de nanothermie
mlavoie@ele.etsmtl.ca
carlos_ortiz@uqtr.uquebec.ca
adam_skorek@uqtr.uquebec.ca

Abstract
In this paper we present the conjugate heat
transfer analysis in a 167 kVA dry type
transformer using the parallel CFD code
Fluent 6.0. The RNG - model is
proposed to deal with the turbulent aspect
of the convective airflow inside the
transformer metal tank that resulting from
ANAN (Air Natural Air Natural) cooling
conditions. An experimental approach was
used to assess Joule losses in the low/high
voltage windings and the Eddy currents
losses in the magnetic core. The resulting
mathematical model was solved using 14
compute nodes on distributed machine.

Introduction

In 1996 it was estimated that about 40

million distribution transformers were
located within US electric utilities
distribution system, and about 16 million
additional transformers were located on
private
commercial
and
industrial
premises. And according to Barnes et al.
[1] more than 1.5 million (liquid immersed
type and the dry type) distribution
transformers are purchased and installed
each
year.
Most
liquid-immersed
transformers are owned by electric utilities
and used in outdoor applications. In
contrast, few dry type transformers are

***Institut de recherche sur lhydrogene

Universit du Qubec Trois-Rivires

owned by electric utilities and they tend to

be installed indoors.
Dry type transformers are characterized by
their configuration into three groups:
potted or encapsulated, exposed core, and
cabinet type. The potted or encapsulated
type uses a filling material (thermoplastic
or thermosetting) that surrounds the core
and coils. The filling material carries the
heat to the transformer case.
The exposed core type uses a shell type
core that surrounds the coils. A protective
case is usually placed on one end and
another case with the wiring compartment
on the other, leaving the core exposed.
Heat conduction is primarily from the coils
to the core to the outside air.
Cabinet types have the core and coil
completely surrounded by a cabinet larger
than the core and coils with ventilating
openings at the bottom and top. Thus, the
air flowing up through the cabinet carries
the heat away.
The dry type units are also rated in terms
of their maximum operating temperature
"rise" (temperature increase beyond an
ambient temperature of 40o C) according to
a letter-class system: A, B, F, or H. A for
no more than 55 C, B for no more than
80 C, C for no more than 115 C and H
for no more than 150 C.
Background

The problem related to the accurate

computation of heat transfer in power
transformer applications is not particularly
new [2] and it has been extensively
documented (for oil-filled units and very
little for dry type units) in the literature of
two main streams that do not necessarily
emphasize on the same aspects of the
phenomena under scope. The two main
streams are the mechanical engineering
community and the electrical engineering
community.
Among the fluid mechanics contributions
we have that of Pierce and Holifield [3]
who used their finite differences code
TWIND to optimize a 10KVA transformer
design. Their model included mass transfer
and radiation heat transfer were in their
nodal equations. In a very elegant way
Saboohi et al. [4] used an empirical
formulation to predict the temperature
gradient in the windings of 16/32 MVA
windings transformer, their model included
hydraulic
equations
for
velocity
computation of the cooling fluid boundary
layers. More recently, Oh Yeon-Ho et al.
[5] conducted a CFD analysis in 3D on a
quarter section of a 400 kVA transformer
using a 600.000 nodes model. In a very
particular way Dreisen et al. [6] run a
magnetothermic code to model harmonics
effects on a 30KVA transformer. Their 2D
analysis involved two meshes for solving
and estimating losses in a detailed way. An
interesting approach was also proposed by
L. Jianzou et al. [7] for a 3D analysis of a
locomotive 6952 KVA transformer tank.
Their study was done using edge (vector)
elements and their model incorporate
ODAF (Oil Directed Air Forced) cooling
conditions by associating a convection
coefficient and a characteristic length to
the boundary layers of the cooling fluid.
The
electromagnetic
publications are
characterized by detailed formulations of
heat dissipation of electromagnetic nature
in the power transformers components.

The Poisson equation is used to model the

heat transfer inside the metal tank as being
conduction predominant and the fluid is
considered a low thermal conductivity
solid. In contrast, in the mechanical
engineering publications heat transfer is
model as being the combined action of
conduction and convection that results
from mass transfer. In previous work [8],
the authors proposed the electromagnetic
approach to determine the temperature
distribution in a dry type transformer. For
the present study we propose a complete
3D CFD analysis of the same model.
The test model

Figure 1. Test transformer.

A cabinet type unit rated at 167 kVA, one
phase, 60n hertz, 8000 V high voltage and
120/240 V low voltage. Thermal tests were
performed with the low windings shorted
and current circulating in the windings. For
security reasons, a reduced voltage of 112
volts and 13 Amps were used as operating
conditions of the unit that was contained in
an air tight metal tank. It was originally
designed to be cooled by metal ducts filled
with a special fluids mixture. The ducts
were placed between the transformer
windings and the heat transfer was
supposed to be achieved by the phase
change of the fluids mixture. At the time
2

being, it was never determined if the

cooling device could have a good option
for potential heat transfer due to the lack of
a thorough CFD analysis. The power
transformer was an experimental design
from the Siemens/VA TECH FerrantiPackard Transformers Company. Fourteen
iron-constant thermocouples were inserted
between the high and the low voltage
windings. One thermocouple was also
placed on the magnetic core.

Figure 2. Full 3D mesh.

A quarter of the simplified model

geometry was first created with the
electromagnetic code JMAG. The resulting
mesh was converted into a NASTRAN
file, which was exported into Gambit (the
CFD code meshing software) to create a
full model and afterwards defining the
CFD problem in terms of boundary types
and continuum types. The final mesh was
then composed of 1333693 nodes. The
whole geometry was meshed with
hexahedral elements, which made it easier
to implement a boundary layer mesh on
regions of interest.
Since no fluid could practically flow in or
out of metal tank only WALL boundaries
were defined at fluid-solid interfaces to
specify zero fluid velocities. The same
boundary type was used on the external
surface of the metal tank to model the AN
(air natural) cooling condition in terms of a
constant heat flux. Enhanced wall

treatment was used as wall treatment

approach, which is a near-wall modeling
that combines a two-layer model (the
viscosity affected near wall region is
completely solved all the way to the
viscous sub-layer) together with enhanced
wall functions [9]. As suggested by the
authors, our near the wall mesh was
created fine enough to resolve down to the
laminar sub-layer (y+= 1).
So once the mesh, the boundary types and
continuum types were defined the resulting
model was exported into Fluent in order to
complete the processing step right after the
incorporation of relevant boundary
conditions. Since the air flow inside the
metal tank was of convective type, the
cooling conditions examined of ANAN
type (Air Natural/Air Natural) for a
convection coefficient of 5 W/m2.K
prescribed on the outer surface of the metal
tank. No heat transfer by radiation was
considered in our model. One particularity
in the implementation of the boundary
conditions is the way the power dissipation
on the electromagnetic circuit was
computed. A measuring method and
transient data were used on that purpose
and not the traditional empirical
formulation that is normally used in many
publications. The approach is well suited
to characterize power dissipation in
electrical machines and is well described in
[6]. Under the assumption that power
dissipation generated in an electrical
device, can be obtained by measuring the
absorbed or liberated energy at different
locations when the operating conditions
are changed. The initial slope of the
temperature change on a given location is
proportional to the heat generation, if
during test conditions the energy flow
remains constant. The power distribution
obtained with the proposed method was as
follows:
High voltage windings
Low voltage windings
Magnetic core

1300 Watts/m3
1500 Watts/m3
260 Watts/m3

better handle low-Reynolds number and

near the walls.

Mathematical formulation
The CFD package Fluent 6.0 solves the
Navier-Stokes equations which include the
conservation
equations
for
mass,
momentum, energy and additional
transport turbulent equations for turbulent
kinetic energy () and its dissipation rate
().

( u j )
(
) = S (5)
x j
x j
x j
For a steady-state solution transient terms
are omitted. All relevant source terms and
diffusion coefficients are given in table 1.

Equation

Continuity

Momentum

uj

Energy

+ t

kj
Cp

t
T

t
+
( u j) xj
xj k xj

t
+
( u j) x j
x j x j

= P +G

= C1 P C2

(5)

(6)

Results and discussion

The solution computation took 5 hours and
23 minutes on a 14 processors architecture.
Simulation results from the proposed CFD
simulation can be obtained in terms of
temperature and pressure distribution,
velocity vectors, path lines and so on. The
most significant data in our case were the
temperature distributions on the magnetic
core and the low/high voltage windings
which were in good agreement with the
measured values.

u
p
+ eff i + gi
x j
x j

S
Cp

Table 1. Source terms and coefficients in

the Navier-Stokes equation when using an
Eddy viscosity turbulent model [10].
The turbulence of the buoyancy driven
flow was solved using the renormalization
group method (or RNG model). The
formulation is quite similar to the well
known - industry standard which is
expressed in terms of two differential
equations (5) and (6) for turbulent
viscosity that are integrated to obtain an
accurate description of how the effective
turbulent viscosity varies with the effective
Reynolds number, allowing the model to

Figure 3. Temperature distribution.

Figure 3. Path lines.

4

In future work we will push our analysis

one step further external cooling
conditions will not be model, they will
actually make part of the computation
domain and we will take into consideration
heat transfer by radiation as well. On the
other hand, well propose a geometry as
close as possible to that of a blueprint. This
will generate for sure a much bigger model
than the one suggested that will require
once again parallel processing.

Processors Time/Iteration (sec.)

1

838

461

244

189

159

10

134

12

107

14

89

Table 2. Computation time per iterations on Sun

Enterprise 6000.

Acknowledgements

Superlinear
Enterprise 6000
15

13

11

Speedup

The authors would like to thank

Laboratoire de Calcul Avanc (cole de
Technologie Suprieure de Montral) for
all the technical support required to run the
CFD code on the distributed machine Sun
Enterprise 6000. M. J. Cook (De Montfort
University) and T. Holified (Howard
Industries) for the advice received.

References

1
1

11

13

15

Number of processors

Figure 6. Parallel performance on Sun Enterprise

6000.

Conclusion

Our CFD approach to model heat transfer

in power apparatus is more realistic than
previous studies in which mass transfer is
modeled rather than being computed. In
our case, we propose a complete
transformer model in 3D altogether with an
experimental method to assess power
dissipation in the electromagnetic circuit.
Taking only into consideration heat
transfer by conduction to assess
temperature
distribution
might
be
somehow misleading.

[1] Barnes P.R., Van Dyke J.W., Mc Connell and Das S.,
Determination Analysis of Energy conservation standards
for distribution transformers, ORNL-6847, Oak Ridge,
Tenn.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1996.
[2] Simon Ryder, A simple method for calculating
winding temperature gradient in power transformers,
IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 17. No. 4,
October 2002.
[3] T. Holifield, L.W. Pierce, A thermal model for
optimized distribution and small power transformer
design, IEEE Conference on Transmission and
Distribution, Vol. 2, pp. 925-929, 1999.
[4] Y. Saboohi, Thermal model operation of arc furnace
transformer in steel making plant in a climate of high
humidity., Conference records of the 2000 IEEE Industry
Applications Conference, Rome, 2000.
[5] Oh Yeo-Ho et al., The thermal analysis of natural
convection cooling transformer, Sixth International
Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems, Vol 1,
9-11, November 2003.

[6] J. Driesen,
R. Belmans, K. Hameyer, The
computation of the effects of harmonic currents on
transformers using a coupled electromagnetic-thermal
FEM approach, Proceedings of the Ninth International
Conference on Harmonics and Quality of Power,
Orlando, 2000.

[7] L. Jianzou, L. Longfu, T. Tiao, Heat analysis of main

high speed electric locomotive transformer tank using 3D finite element method., Proceedings of the Fifth
International conference on electrical machines and
systems, Shenyang, 2001.
[8] C Ortiz et al., Parallel analysis of electrothermal
phenomena in a dry type distribution transformer, Paralec
2002, Warsaw (Incomplete)
[9] F. J. Trujillo et al., CFD modeling of the heat and
mass transfer process during the evaporation of water
from circular cylinder, Third International Conference on
CFD in the Minerals and Process Industries CSIRO,
Melbourne Australia, December 2003.
[10] M. J. Cook, K. J. Lomas, Guidance on the use of
computational fluid dynamics for modeling buoyancy
driven flows, (Incomplete)
[11] G. Rakotonirina et al., A new approach to modeling
core losses in induction motor using polynomial
functions, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and
Computer Engineering 2001, Toronto, May 2001.

Nomenclature
Q : power dissipation W/m3
: Density Kg/m3
Cp: Specific heat
g, g
T : Temperature C
t : Time seconds
uj = velocity component

= density
= viscosity
p = pressure
xj = x , y, z
(To be completed)