Actually, I am running cfd simulation for a heat exchanger which has two fluids one hot and other one is cold fluid. there is a solid domain between them, which I removed and instead I have used wall thickness for the solid in boundary condition. I have seen on the forums to use shell conduction as well for the thickness of solid domain. Now as soon as i run define the solid domain with wall thickness option the results are different than that of after using shell conduction. why is that so? which is more accurate and recommended?
Hi Muhammad Shariq Khan
About what you asked, in general, modeling and solving the conjugate heat transfer in a solid is more accurate than the shell conduction method. Because in shell conduction method only one cell layer generated in the solid part.
How much is the difference in your results?
hi Muhammad,
Shell conduction virtually creates a cell of specified shell thickness between the wall and wall shadow. The basic assumption that goes with shell conduction is that it doesn't considers heat transfer in all 3 directions.
But having said that usually for thin solids, shell model replicates the thermal physics more or less accurate.
hope you have achieved mesh independence and solutions are converged with good mesh.
Regards,
Rajesh.
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