Temperature profile across solid/interface/fire

Jie

Dear all,

I am going to simulate an unsteady heat transfer process when a very thicker SS drum is put into a fire. The purpose is to obtain the variation of temperature profile with time.

As far as I know, Fluent is very good at fluid simulation. I am wondering if it can also be employed to simulate heat tranfer within solids (ie. drum wall)?

Also, it seems that people use a so-called "ANSYS" package, -a FEM type of software for the structure simulation, to resolve such a probplem. However, it seems to me that such a package does not have so strong capacity as FLUENT have in term of resolving flow/transport problem in fluids.

Can anyone tell me about a possible good tool? Any comments on the capacities of both softwares above-mentioned would be highly appreciated.

Thank you very much in advance!

- Jie