Learning Forum

[Brendan De Leon]

Hello! Thank you for your time. I am coming back to Ansys after about 2 years, and I had previously only dealt with structural analysis. Currently, I am trying to do some thermal analysis to see at what point in time heat pipes can stabilize the temperature of a model experiencing a constant heat flux on one of its surfaces. For the heat pipes, I used copper as a base material while increasing the Isotropic Thermal Conductivity to 4000 from its original value of 400, insulating all surfaces but the very bulb to try and mimic the heat flow towards that endpoint.

I am unsure if this is the best way to mimic a heat pipe, however. Would it be better to try and create a heat pipe in Fluent or CFX to transfer in, or are there other methods I can use solely in the Transient Thermal module? I don't need it to be highly accurate, but I would like some degree of assurance that I am obtaining a reasonable result. Thank you again for your time!

[Rahul Kumbhar]

Hi Brendon,

Are you planning to simulate heat flow through fluid inside as well? or is it just heat conduction through metal? If there is fluid inside, there should be convection used. Better approach would be to define fluid116 element inside the tube and define convection on fluid surafce.

[Brendan De Leon]

Hi Rahul! I appreciate the input. I should have mentioned that I did have convection on the fluid surface, although it was only on the very tip of the rounded bulb. Defining a fluid throughout sounds like a good idea however, thank you!