Fluent Analysis of a Solar water heater

pavanmsd · April 10, 2012, 15:30

Hello everyone,
I am new to both the forum and the software, so please bear with me if something is wrong with this post.
I have taken up a project so that it will help me get familiar with CFD. I have fabricated a solar flat plate collector and conducted the experiment. I have to validate the results with those of the CFD. I have modeled the tubes and the manifolds in ICEM CFD and meshed them using O-grids. So far so good. I am having problem with fluent though. I am using K-epsilon model and giving heat flux value on the walls, the value I have calculated from the experiment and also giving the wall temperature. Turns out the heat flux value is not changing anything. I gave 60 W/m2 and wall temp 347k -the outlet water temp is around 345k. Then just to check the result I changed the values to 376W/m2 and 347 k but still I am getting the same 345k outlet temperature. the temperature I got during the experiment is 331 k. Can someone please help me with this?

Radhakrishna22by7 · April 12, 2012, 06:33

Try to couple the inner surface of the pipe with outer surface of the fluid volume. Then only heat flux can have effect on the fluid.
In boundary conditions select the inner pipe wall change the BC type to interface. Similarly do the same thing for outer fluid volume surface. Then go to mesh interface. Select the interfaces. Give a name. Now the solid and fluid is coupled. Hope it ll help you.

April 10, 2012, 15:30	Fluent Analysis of a Solar water heater	#1
pavanmsd New Member pava msd Join Date: Mar 2012 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Hello everyone, I am new to both the forum and the software, so please bear with me if something is wrong with this post. I have taken up a project so that it will help me get familiar with CFD. I have fabricated a solar flat plate collector and conducted the experiment. I have to validate the results with those of the CFD. I have modeled the tubes and the manifolds in ICEM CFD and meshed them using O-grids. So far so good. I am having problem with fluent though. I am using K-epsilon model and giving heat flux value on the walls, the value I have calculated from the experiment and also giving the wall temperature. Turns out the heat flux value is not changing anything. I gave 60 W/m2 and wall temp 347k -the outlet water temp is around 345k. Then just to check the result I changed the values to 376W/m2 and 347 k but still I am getting the same 345k outlet temperature. the temperature I got during the experiment is 331 k. Can someone please help me with this?

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April 12, 2012, 06:33		#2
Radhakrishna22by7 New Member Radhakrishna Pai Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	Try to couple the inner surface of the pipe with outer surface of the fluid volume. Then only heat flux can have effect on the fluid. In boundary conditions select the inner pipe wall change the BC type to interface. Similarly do the same thing for outer fluid volume surface. Then go to mesh interface. Select the interfaces. Give a name. Now the solid and fluid is coupled. Hope it ll help you.