Discrete modelling of heat transfer

The research involves the development of a discrete lattice approach for modelling heat transfer, which can be an attractive alternative to other numerical approaches, such as the nite element method. In this work, the spatial arrangement of the lattice elements is determined by the Delaunay triangulation and the Voronoi tessellation. The objective of the present work is to investigate in more detail this type of lattice model for heat transfer. In the lattice models studied here the domain to be analysed is discretised by a network of discrete lattice elements. The spatial arrangement of these elements is determined by connecting nodes placed within the domain. There are two methods to determine the connections between the nodes in the domain. In the rst one, the connections are dened as the edges of the Delaunay triangulation. In the second method, the nodes are dened by the edges of Voronoi cells, based on a Voronoi tessellation of the domain. These connections dene the arrangement of the pipe elements, which are used to perform the heat transfer analysis. The cross-sections of the pipe elements for the two approaches are chosen in several dierent ways to be consistent with the discretisation approach. It was shown that with this approach, analytical solutions could be represented accu- rately. Several stationary and non-stationary heat transfer problems were analysed. The performance of the two approaches was evaluated by comparing the numerical results with analytical solutions. Both temperature and ux distributions were studied. 2

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

MSc(R)

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Glasgow

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Jassim Katwan, Osama M.

• TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)

Language dc:language

en