Wednesday 27 April 2016

fluid dynamics - Buoyancy and natural convection in a stratified water tank


I'm working on a simple calculation-model for a hot-water-storage. At the moment I'm stuck on implementing natural convection.


To calculate the temperature I've implemented a simple 1D-model in python. My tank consists of vertically stacked volumes/cells. If the temperature of one cell is higher than that of the cell above, as shown for cell 5 with a temperature of 50°C, I want to calculate the resulting massflow.


Model of instable stratified tank


So far I tried to implement the buoyancy-model used in modelica (which is calculating a heat-flow instead of a massflow. That's quite ok...). But I can't get it to work properly. The resulting increase in temperature is just massive (and the units don't fit)... The code for the model can be found here: Modelica buoyancy model
A short example for my calculations (default values are for the mean temperature of T4 and T5: 40°C): $$ \tau = 60\,s, \ \ V = 0.1\,m^3, \ \ T_4 = 30\,^\circ C, \ \ T_5 = 50\,^\circ C, \ \ \rho_{def} = 992.21\,\frac{kg}{m^3}, \ \ c_{p_{def}} = 4178.63\,\frac{J}{kgK} $$ $\Delta T = 20\,K$
$k = \frac{V \rho_{def} c_{p_{def}}}{\tau} = 6910\,\frac{W}{K}$
$Q_{flow} = \dot{Q} = k * \Delta T^2 = 2.7641e6\,\frac{JK}{s}$

$Q = Q_{flow} * \tau = 1.6584e8\,JK$
$\delta T = \frac{Q}{c_{p_{def}}V\rho_{def}} = 400\,K^2$
$sqrt(\delta T) = 20\,K = \Delta T$
So basically the result is my input... Is there a mistake in translating the modelica-code to equations? Or how does modelica get useful results out of this?


My second approach to solve the buoyancy-problem is the use of equations for thermals as in this link at page 171: Plumes and Thermals
But here I'm stuck at calculating the correct buoyancy of cell 5. (I know this sounds simple, but after about 4 days of trying to solve this problem I guess my brain just turned to butter).
When calculation the buoyancy like shown in this image: Pressure_distribution_on_an_immersed_cube


And transferring this to my storage-model with cells:
How do I calculate the forces on cell 5? Do I have to consider the density of cells 1 to 3 to calculate the force on the top of cell 5 and cell 6 for the force on the bottom of cell 5?
Or if working with displaced fluid and using the buoyancy forumla $B = \frac{\rho_\infty - \rho_{Cell 5}}{\rho_\infty} g V$: Which density should I use for the surrounding fluid? Am I calculating the density by 50% density of cell 4 and 50% density of cell 6?



Thanks so far! And if anyone got a better idea on how to work on the buoyancy calculation: I'm grateful for your advices!




No comments:

Post a Comment

Understanding Stagnation point in pitot fluid

What is stagnation point in fluid mechanics. At the open end of the pitot tube the velocity of the fluid becomes zero.But that should result...