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Boundary Conditions:
• Room walls: Adiabatic
• Container walls: Conservative
heat transfer
Initial Conditions:
• P=100 kPa
• Air: 295.15 K
• Water: 353.15 K
Model and Analysis
Overview of Meshes: Meshes:
• N=18,000
• Refined meshes near the boundary of
the container
Models:
• Ra (air)=3.5E09
• Ra (water)=1.3E13
• Turbulence model: standard k-e model
• Effect of buoyancy: natural conv.
Schemes:
• Pressure-velocity: SIMPLE
• Others: second-order upwind
Time step:
• Delta t=0.1 s
Computed time:
Note: actually the meshes shown here are not • t=1E4 s, total steps=1E5
enough for accurate solution, just for demo.
Note
This simulation, using Fluent 6.1 CFD code, shows
only the overall results visually.
As expected natural convection currents develop within
the chamber as heated air rises from the hot water
container walls; to maintain mass continuity air is drawn
to the heater and thus creates a recirculation pattern.
In the simulation , despite symmetry, the currents
appear to be asymmetric-this maybe a numerical artifact
or a real instability (not studied in depth yet).
Details- ignore if not interested!
Note that the real problem is a transient one i.e. time-
dependent
Thermal equilibrium takes a long time to reach
(theoretically infinite time!)
To see what happens during the time from the instant
the hot water is placed in the room to the time when all
temperatures equalize, we must solve the rate
equations, which are highly nonlinear and have no
analytical solution. Choice of boundary conditions is
very important.
Mass, Momentum and Energy
Equations governing the problem
Mass:
Momentum:
• k- ε model:
k:
ε:
• Boussinesq model:
Energy:
Typical Results
Temperature Field at Selected Transient Time: :
Typical
Thermal field
Concluding Remarks
Due to the high Rayleigh number (measure of free convection)
for this free convection case, , the computational mesh needs to
be highly refined to get accurate results;
The evolution of the temperature contours (isotherms) appears
to be asymmetric due to possible instability ( no research yet on
this configuration) or numerical artifact;
The time to reach true thermal equilibrium is too long to be
simulated fully.
This is a highly computing-intensive problem-even in 2-D.
Shown here only to illustrate how thermodynamic analysis
differs from that of rate processes involving momentum or
energy transfer