Hi All,

I am doing a steady state CHT model of a laser device. I have a heat source in a small location in the solid and there is a water jacket inside the solid to cool down the system. The solid's outside wall is adiabatic. Now I have two different designs, in which one has 40% larger surface area for the fluid/solid interface. Since I am running steady state simulations, the total thermal energy would stay constant in both models due to balance of energy. I am wondering what metric would be appropriate to compare these two models? Heat flux? Temperature? or something else?

Thanks, Marick

Hi,

Maybe temperature at the heat source? Also things like pressure drop and flow rate in the coolant may be important. Depends on what you are doing.

Glenn Horrocks

Thanks Glenn. The flow rate is constant. I am interested in the design that cools down the system better (or cools it down faster if you model transient flow). So I would think the model with a larger surface area would be the answer. However I wonder how to interpret the temperature/wall heat flux on the interface between the solid and fluid? Again in a steady state solution the total thermal energy in both designs would be the same, so how could I tell show which design would be better? I am going to check the temperatures on the heat source surface. That might actually work!

Thanks again, Marick

Hi,

Well, won't the design with the best heat rejection result in the lowest temperature at the heat source? That sounds like the simplest and most direct measure to me.

Glenn Horrocks