Phase change material in oil pan - solidification
 

Hello!

I am a student. I am preparing uni project with FLUENT, but I am new to CFD. The case is thin layer of PCM which surrounds oil pan. I want to observe how quick would pcm solidify, with car exposed to low temperature (simulation is based on american diesel cold-start improvment research work, UNIVERSITY
OF DAYTON, 2000, Scott D. Stouffer, Arthur B. Lewis, Thomas J. Whitney, Michael L. Drake). Model is just pcm layer. I've added 3 BC walls: oil pan part, surrending (outer) part and engine block/chassis part. Since this is just a sketch, BCs are just const temperatures. I have run steady simulation and I got my first results which are OK.

I want to perform long transient simulation (up to 10 hours) which allows me to export animation how quick etc does pcm changes. First question is: it is possible to set one of BC (part of wall in contact with oil pan - top side of pcm model) working like "temporary" temp wall? Or temp convection/heat flow? When i say temporary I think about that oil in oil pan has some (high) temperature and, after engine shutdown, starts to transfer heat to pcm (and egnine block etc, what I skip coz Im engineer). Well, it is transfering heat earlier too but i am starting simulation after engine shutdown. But oil (and oil pan itself) has thermal mass, which is "exhausted" after some time (that means oil pan and pcm have equal temp and is not longer transfer heat to one another). BC of outer wall and chassis wall I would keep as const temp to simplify computings, it would be enough to my simulation?

I was thinking about size of FE too. Since Courant number is not computable in non-flowing simulation I can only guess.

Sorry for my English, I hope anybody can help me :) Have a good night

P.S. Link to case, data and mesh files: Please use virus scaner, just to be sure. Fluent 16. I am using Fluent in uni lab.

What I need is a transient boundary condition. What I have to do is just set one of mine BC (oil pan wall part) to transient BC using a standard transient profiles (help section 6.6.5). It should be pretty simple. I've wrote a formula and I'm trying to read this file to FLUENT via Profile Dialog Box but it does not respond - FLUENT reads no data.

By the way, I've tried writing a BC profile file by Profile Dialog Box. I have choose one of my BC and selected density and temperature vales. But I've noticed that in output file fluent is saving coordinates and initial values of specific mesh (nodes?) of my BC wall rather then boundary condition set via setup -> Boundary Conditions -> Edit.

My goal is to set transient thermal BC (temperature) on one of oil pan walls and I am confused.

I would be grateful for any help!

I added my BC transient profile file (which is not working).

I don't know if it's correct to double post so please merge if need.

Hi,
You must replace all commas with points.
Moreover you defined the series having 71 values but you have 61 values for time and 62 values for temperature (273 is repeated 2 times).

Thanks Daniele,

shamefull mistake. I did change comas and series but unfortunately FLUENT is still not reading profile file :(

Attach your new profile file and post more info about what you did and the error you received.

More info here:
http://jullio.pe.kr/fluent6.1/help/html/ug/node174.htm

Yes I have red whole 6.6 chapter in Fluent 16 about using profiles.

Profile file: There is no error. I run Fluent, read case&data file, then read profile file (File -> Read -> Profile...), name of file is "miska-transbc.prof". I select it but Fluent says only and nothing is happening, the Profiles panel is empty too (Setup -> Boundary Condition -> Profiles...).

Once you loaded the profile file, don't you have to load it in the boundary condition panel?
Read here:
https://www.sharcnet.ca/Software/Flu...ug/node304.htm

After hours of changing profile file like a mad I have saved it as a text-only format, without formatting, via wordpad and it worked...

Thanks ghost82