Contact UsCFD Thermal Simulation Consulting
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models can calculate the heat transfer of conduction, convection, and radiation through solid and fluid bodies.
Thermal Consulting Engineering Services
CFD models are often used to calculate the heat transfer coefficients for all types of flows, including natural, forced, and mixed convection.
More complicated heat transfer effects like viscous heating, compressibility, real material models, and phase change including flashing, evaporation, cavitation, and boiling can be included.
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Recent CFD/Thermal Management Consulting Projects
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Consulting
The effectiveness of the enzymes responsible for various constituent steps, including denaturing, annealing, and extension, determines how effective any PCR process will be. For the DNA amplification project, a thorough thermal analysis was required from the dimensionless Rayleigh number used in simulation to the real temperature and exposure period encountered in practice.
Steam Turbine Building
The natural and forced convection heat transfer were modeled for an HVAC system for a large industrial building that contained numerous pieces of complex industrial equipment and heat sources. The model was then used to evaluate the HVAC design at several different load conditions and potential layout variations.
Direct Contact Steam Heating Tank
The heating time and thermal mixing of a transient batch direct contact heating process for a nuclear sludge tank were modeled. The model required capturing numerous complex physics, including free surface, multiphase, phase change, Bingham plastic mixing model material models, and long transient duration.
MEMS Device
The transient thermal performance of a small MEMS device with a natural convection cooling system was modeled under several different thermal loading cases. A successful MEMS project requires the right expertise and experience, accurate identification of the requirements and specifications for the device + system, intelligent process design, proper device design, and a thorough understanding of the difficulties associated with fabrication, testing, and packaging.
Tablet and Laptop Thermal Management
The thermal management for a mixed convection-cooled Intel i7 Laptop and a natural convection-cooled ARM tablet were calculated. The temperatures were matched to experimental data. The matching required accurate prediction of the convection, conduction, and radiation heat paths.
Electronic Enclosures
The conductive, radiative, and mixed convective heat transfer were modeled for several commercial chips with three different enclosure designs for a large semiconducting company. Additionally, a Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) analysis was used to simulate the exchange of thermal energy between the solid and fluid domains at their interfaces.
Related Thermal Consulting Projects
Thermal Performance Evaluation of a Steam Generator
SimuTech Group regularly conducts consulting studies to help utilities evaluate thermal performance losses in steam generators (SG) caused by corrosion product accumulation and forecast future rates of thermal performance degradation. In an recent in-field study for a US utility, SimuTech Group offered the following support and advice:
- Evaluation of current SG fouling and thermal efficiency loss levels
- Forecasting future thermal performance losses, including a probabilistic evaluation of the time when power output would start to decline
- Thermal efficiency losses in the absence of corrective action
- Economic evaluation of potential thermal performance restoration and mitigation strategies
- Including determining the best application frequency based on timing
- Updated analysis to evaluate the degree of thermal performance recovery brought about by…
- Carrying out the suggested remedial maintenance procedures and the following rate of re-fouling seen.
Thermal Management Consulting in Utilities
Modeling of Thermal Fatigue in Reactor Coolant Piping
Thermal fatigue brought on by turbulence has caused material degradation and primary water leaks in nuclear facilities. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and other numerical solvers, SimuTech Group has supported several power generation-oriented businesses to produce high-resolution industrial models for thermal fatigue.
Among SimuTech Group’s thermal-based skill sets in this area are:
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- Thermal, structural, and fatigue studies combined with CFD modeling of the mixing tees in the residual heat removal system
- Employing high-resolution particle image velocimetry and comparison to semi-empirical industrial models for validation
- CFD modeling of turbulent swirl penetration in typically stagnant branch lines, using high-resolution particle image velocimetry
- Determine piping in-leakage and cross-flow via inverse system analysis…
- … In tandem with bespoke Python scripts and field observations for modeling and evaluation of crack propagation
Related Ansys CFD Software Capabilities
- Full energy equation, including high-Mach number compressibility effects
- Conduction and convection through solids and fluids, including force and natural (buoyancy-driven) convection
- Radiation models including P1, surface-to-surface, and ray tracing
- Phase change and boiling models
- Temperature-dependent material properties