I am currently working on the structural mechanical side some model. Since the contains a fluid flow inside, I wanted to model the flow inside my structure.
I assume that my flow is similar to a "simple" pipe flow. Basically this is what I have:
- A list of crosssections with a specified area and the distance between each crosssection
- The mass flow rate through my pipe (which is constant for every crosssection)
- I have given temperatures of the pipe which varries from crosssection to crosssection
What I eventually want to get is:
- the fluid temperatures and the heat transfer coefficients at each crosssection
Since I do not want to solve a coupled system of differential equations (full navier stokes, 1D). I went with the following aproach:
- assume constant density to begin with
- compute velocities (continuity eq.)
- compute pressure loss (bernoulli)
- compute heat transfer coefficients (mainly based on velocity)
- incrementally compute the fluid temperature using the heat transfer coefficients using the external temperature
This aproach fails in the central aspect that the changing temperature which results from step 5. is not considered in the first few steps.
My question is:
- Is this aproach sufficient for a very vague temperature field inside my fluid and how close to the real solution could I expect this solution to be?
- Is there a simplification I could do to solve the full navier stokes equations on each section and get an accurate result?
I am very happy for any help :)