Coolant Pipe Heat Transfer

Group of 3 : 2 weeks

Background

For my fluids class, my team and I studied an engine cooling system to understand the effects of components under a hood and the absorption of heat. Heat transfer and velocity flow were analyzed through computational fluid dynamics and a CFD simulation.

Task Distribution

A large portion of time spent on this paper was determining appropriate assumptions for computation, which involved lots of research. After my team and I met with the Professor to discuss the assumptions, I began working on the computations. One of my teammebers modeled the pipe and we met to run the COMSOL simulation, comparing the values with my calculations along the way.

Future Work

There were flaws in the conditions set in COMSOL and some of the assumptions made, which could have been corrected by the following points:

Specify outlet conditions for the heat applied
Shift from laminar to turbulent flow (there was no convergence during laminar flow)
Extend the length of the pipe and avoid over-simplifying the cross sectional geometry of the pipe!