Hi folks,

I am trying to simulate the flow of a fluid (whose thermophysical properties change greatly with temperature and pressure) in a structured packed bed. This packed bed is composed of many packing elements. I developed a previous model for a whole packing element with 3.3 million elements and now I am trying to study the heat transfer on this geometry. In my experimental apparatus I am measuring the temperature of the fluid at the entrance and at the outlet (in the distance between these two points there are 10 packing elements). Since the mesh for a whole packing element is already very big, my first approach to simulate the the 10 packing elements was to carry on consecutive simulations with the packing element model, saving the outlet profiles of velocities and temperature of a previous simulations and using them as inputs at the next simulation. At the end of ten consecutive simulations I ended with a big difference between the experimental and simulated results (I previously validated the hydrodynamics for the whole packing element model). These are the questions: 1. Is it possible that by performing successive simulations I am generating a lot of deviation (for instance, due to interpolation of the velocity and temperature profiles) ; 2. I could try to join the meshes for the ten packing elements but I feel that this would be pointless (I would end with a grid with about 35000 elements - unmanageable!) 3. I will thankfully accept any ideias regarding the solution of my problem and how to proceed with the study of the heat transfer.

Many thanks in advance,

Best regards to you all!

João

Hello I am also working on structural packing simulation with CFD. Can I ask you a few questiond? 1- What type of structure packing do you work with?( I work with 252x malpack) 2- what sofware do you apply to design geometry?( I use gambit) 3- would you please send me the file of geometry that you have designed?

Thanks a million Ali