Hi, I want to setup a simulation of an forced air cooler, made of steel tubes with aluminium fins. What I would like to have as results is final gas pressure drop and temperature, in order to optimize the quantity of tubes/passes and separation between them. Also would be interesting see how is performing the fan cover/duct, and if we could improve it also.
Could it be all computed with one simulation (conjugated heat transfer including the external cooling by the fan)? I have the accurate geometry of the assembly (ovbiously I will simplificate a lot to create a simulation model), including the fan blades, but also have the data curve that could be easier to enter as bc.
On the oter side, thinking in the aluminium fins of the tubes, they will be a very small geometry considering the whole assembly, is there any standard simplified representation of them???
This looks as a very interesting project, as complex as it is. I will try to answer your questions:
Yes, ideally this should all be computed in the same simulation (Conjugate Heat Transfer).
You can use an rotating region for the fan, given that you have the geometry, but the fan curve as a BC should reduce the simulation cost.
I don’t think there is a simplified model for the heat transfer of tubes/fins. If it turns out to be a prohibitively large, then some simplification would be to take a small portion for the length and extrapolate the results.
I’m starting with the more simple simulation (incompressible flow inside the tubes at constant temperature in only one block). My first problem was to create the internal flow volumen inside the Simscale CAD platform, even if I had simplified and take a lot of carefull to make as easy as possible, it was impossible to make the operations. I came back to my CAD to directly create the fluid volume from scratch (it was impossible to make with boolean operatios either), will keep it updated about my progrress, now is meshing since 30 min ago.
