Steel tank - QuickField simulation example
The steel tank contains hot water. Determine the wall temperature and heat losses.
How to find heat loss through steel tank wall?
Answer Typical applications Geometry
Given
Task
Solution
Result
*Rajput R.K.(2010). Engineering Thermodynamics, Third Edition. Sudbury, MA:Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Page 805. Engineering question
Set up a plane-parallel QuickField Steady-state Heat Transfer problem for a steel tank wall and evaluate heat loss from computed field results.
steel storage tanks, cylindrical vessels, industrial liquid tanks
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Simulation problem
Problem Type
Plane-parallel problem of heat transfer.
Hot water temperature t°=95°C;
Water-to-wall convection coefficient α = 2850 W/m²°C;
Cooling air temperature 15°C;
Wall-to-air convection coefficient α = 10 W/m²°C;
Wall thermal conductivity λ = 50 W/m·K.
Calculate the average heat flux density passing through the tank wall and the wall air-side temperature.
To solve the problem it is enough to simulate a small piece of the tank wall. Heat losses (heat flux density) are calculated as a heat flux value divided by the wall surface area value.
Heat flux through the wall is 795 W per 1 meter square, average surface temperature is 94.5°C.
QuickField
Theory*
Error
Wall outside temperature
94.53°C
94.52°C
0.011%
Flux density, W/m²
795.3
795.2
0.013%
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