thermal analysis - how to model internal fan?

Pei-Ying Hsieh

Hi,

I am working on a conjugate heat transfer project. Inside the fluid domain, there is a fan. The purpose of the fan is to provide force convection to uniform the temperature inside the fluid domain. This is a transient case. How to setup BCs for the fan?

The volume where the fan occupied was cut out. here, there are: walls, + one face for fan intake and one face for fan outlet.

For the intake side, I am using: inlet velocity (toward inside the fan) with zero gradient for temperature.

For the outlet side (flow into the fluid domain), I am using:

inlet velocity (toward the fluid domain)

temperature: calculate average temperature from the intake side, then, assign the average temperature to this surface face.

Is this reasonable? Any suggestion?

Thanks!

phsieh2005