The goal of this project was to develop a system using only natural convection to effectively remove heat from an enclosed system, ensuring safe temperature levels on its external surfaces.
Sponsored by: Hatch Associates Consultants, Inc.
Team Members
Vanessa Dib Nicholas Gaborek Kevalin Kalra Adam Overton Ryan Sims
Instructor: Gregory Banyay
Project Poster
Click on any image to enlarge.
Project Video
Project Summary
Overview
This project focused on designing an efficient heat removal system for Hatch, an engineering consultancy. The goal was to develop a system using only natural convection to effectively remove heat from an enclosed system, ensuring safe temperature levels on its external surfaces.
Objectives
1. Maintain an exterior surface temperature below specified limits under different operational heat loads.
2. Design and validate a convection cooling system based on natural air flow principles using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and preliminary calculations.
3. Prototype a practical application model suitable for high heat conditions.
Approach
– Initial Calculations: Utilizing the principles of heat transfer, we calculated necessary parameters like the average heat transfer coefficient for different configurations of our system.
– Simulation of SolidWorks and CFD: We modeled and simulated multiple designs to refine our design based on temperature, pressure, velocity, and fluid density measurements.
– Prototype Development: We constructed the prototype comprising a heat source and convection chamber using materials like mineral wool for insulation and steel for smooth airflow management.
Outcomes
The three main design choices of the length of the dividing wall, the duct outlet design, and the spacing and shape on the inlets helped to successfully keep our sensitive surface at a constant temperature even when the heat source increased in temperature nearly seven times more than the outer surface. The heat removal efficiency can be seen by the air leaving the system pushing the paper at the outlet.