Coupled FEM simulation of turbulent flow and temperature in insulated pipes

Abstract

pipe was designed including turbulence and flow velocity strongly coupled with temperature field. 2D axis-symmetrical problem of thermally insulated pipe was solved by finite element method. Two different numerical analyses were performed in order to simulate nonsteady thermo-hydraulic processes in the thermally insulated pipe.
The coupled thermo-hydraulic analysis includes viscous incompressible flow, k-ε turbulence model, heat conduction and convective heat transfer model, tempera-ture dependent material properties and multi-physical in-teractions. Time histories of temperature evolution were provided in several characteristic points of the solution domain. Temperature distribution was examined at several cross-sections. In order to evaluate the characteristic errors of engineering hydraulic models, separated thermal analy-sis was performed independently. Quantitative comparison of the results obtained by the different numerical analyses was performed.