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how to find heat loss in hollow cylinder???

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Hi everyone,

Now i am using comsol 4.1. i have finished one Heat transfer problem (hollow cylinder) with dimensions ri=0.05m,r0=0.1m,and length is 1 m. i have applied temperature 573 k on inner radius and 323 k on outer surface.but,now i have some trouble in find the rate of heat loss from inner to outer...

can you help me??

Thanking you
parma

1 Reply Last Post Dec 25, 2011, 4:09 a.m. EST
Ivar KJELBERG COMSOL Multiphysics(r) fan, retired, former "Senior Expert" at CSEM SA (CH)

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Posted: 1 decade ago Dec 25, 2011, 4:09 a.m. EST
Hi

you problem is rather symmetric, depending only on "r" so applying Fourier heat law

q[W/m^2] = -k[W/m/K]*Grad(T)[K/m]

and taking into account the cylindrical coordinate transform, you get the heat flux (W per area) as

q = -k*(573-323)/(0.1-0.05)/ln(0.1/0.05)

or a q/k of about 7213.5 [K/m]

and that is what you see if you plot the heat flux magnitude in a cut plane, no ?

as you say nothing about the heat conductance "k" I have normalised over "k" (or you can use k=1 in COMSOL, and as you are in steady state "rho" and "Cp" are irrelevant, you can also use "1" as values there.

for the ln(Rext/Rint) I leave it to you to search on the web, there are several references there, and probably in your heat transfer text books too ;)

By the way you need to play a little with the mesh density to get a resonnable value, you could also try to use boundary elements, on the inner and outer surface, an easy way to get a denser mesh for better boundary temperature gradient, hence heat flux estimations, particularly in time dependent solving (less critical in steady state, ... why ?)

--
Good luck
Ivar
Hi you problem is rather symmetric, depending only on "r" so applying Fourier heat law q[W/m^2] = -k[W/m/K]*Grad(T)[K/m] and taking into account the cylindrical coordinate transform, you get the heat flux (W per area) as q = -k*(573-323)/(0.1-0.05)/ln(0.1/0.05) or a q/k of about 7213.5 [K/m] and that is what you see if you plot the heat flux magnitude in a cut plane, no ? as you say nothing about the heat conductance "k" I have normalised over "k" (or you can use k=1 in COMSOL, and as you are in steady state "rho" and "Cp" are irrelevant, you can also use "1" as values there. for the ln(Rext/Rint) I leave it to you to search on the web, there are several references there, and probably in your heat transfer text books too ;) By the way you need to play a little with the mesh density to get a resonnable value, you could also try to use boundary elements, on the inner and outer surface, an easy way to get a denser mesh for better boundary temperature gradient, hence heat flux estimations, particularly in time dependent solving (less critical in steady state, ... why ?) -- Good luck Ivar

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