Learning Forum

[Jessevass]

I am simulating a tube with a hot oil flow inside and a cold airflow on the outside. (see the geometry below). In the meshing environment, I defined all the different bodies and wall functions (inlet, outlet, adiabatic wall). 

[Karthik Remella]

Hello This looks like a conjugate heat transfer problem. When you make the geometry, please make sure your perform the Share Topology operation in Ansys SpaceClaim. This will avoid the creation of contact regions in your simulation (Fluent). You will see coupled wall - wall shadow boundaries and you don't have to manually supply the heat transfer coefficient anymore. Fluent will automatically compute the necessary heat fluxes in your domain.
Please have a look at the following example to see the usage of coupled wall - wall-shadow. These are part of your Ansys Innovation Courses, which are our free courses that you can take to learn to simulation physics. There are other examples as well. Please check our website for additional examples.
Cooling a Heat Sink with Convective Heat Transfer - Simulation Example - ANSYS Innovation Courses
Karthik

[Jessevass]

Hello Karthik Thanks for your answer. I understand what you mean. After doing the share topology operation in Ansys, the interfaces disappeared. So now I have another question. Because if Fluent is automatically computing all the heat fluxes, why can I still define a convection transfer coefficient at the Wall boundary conditions? Can you use this heat transfer coefficient to compromise the model for differences between the simulation results and real-life test results?

Thanks!

[Karthik Remella]

As these are internal boundaries, you will not be able to specify the heat transfer coefficient. The heat transfer coefficient, in a Conjugate heat transfer analysis, is part of the solution.
Karthik