[cfdlearner]

I've been working on a closed system problem and I'm having trouble figuring out what to do. My system is as follows:

A pump circulates coolant throughout the system. The coolant flows through a pipe inlet into two outlets. Each outlet connects to a component for the purposes of cooling it. The coolant goes through the component and into another set of pipes (this time with only one outlet), and out into atmospheric conditions.

My boundary conditions: the pump's maximum volumetric flow rate, and the atmospheric conditions in the outlet of the second set of pipes.

My approach:

Start with the second set of pipes. I would use 3 separate flow rates at the inlets (for the purposes of creating a function of the static inlet press vs. flow rate), and put the pressure outlet at 0 gage. Once I know what the static inlet press. vs. flow rate function looks like, I would put that function at the pressure outlet of the components (assume identical components). I would run the component at 3 different flow rates to get a function of the component static inlet press. vs. flow rate given the outlet condition from the pipes we calculated earlier.

Then I would run the first set of pipes using the pump's max. flow rate and the pressure outlets (2 of them, one for each component) would contain the pressure function of the components. Once this simulation is done, I would have modelled the entire system working backwards from the very last point in the loop to the beginning.

This is how I've been modelling this. Is this correct or is there a better way?

Thanks in advance.