Learning Forum

[fulcrum]

Hello, I'm new to Ansys.

I need to model heat transfer in a pipe-in-pipe HE.

Inner tube has many thin extruded fins: 250 in total. Tube length 100 mm.

Now my question(s):

1) Is this problem solvable on a ordinary PC ? 6 GB of RAM, 2.3 GHz.

2) Any meshing methods advice before to start ?

Please see the attached pictures:

Heat Exchanger 
Inner_Tube 
Inner_Tube_2

 

 

 

[Rob]

What do you actually want to model? Ie fluid heat transfer to the solid, stresses in the solid etc.   From there the community can probably guide you. 

 

 

[fulcrum]

Given the inlet pressures and temperatures of the two fluids I need to model heat transfer through the finned pipe wall, outlet temperatures and hydraulic losses.
Hot fluid (gas, combustion products) flows in the inner tube. Thanks.

[Rob]

OK. Given the mesh limits on the Student & Teaching software I'd look at a 2d-axisymmetric model in Fluent. You then model a slice of the geometry, and can mesh the fins with enough resolution to get that information. 

There are some geometry & mesh requirements so have a look at the documentation before starting to work with the software.