Thermal analysis of an engineering application using commercial software

Introduction:

This term project involves the student to participate in a group activity to work on the thermal analysis of applications involving conduction, convection, heat exchanger analysis. This project is aimed to provide the students a chance to analyze a heat transfer problem of their own choice using a commercial software and learning different numerical analysis techniques in the process. The students must additionally establish that the problem they have chosen can be categorized as a complex engineering problem (CEP). The attributes of CEP are given as below:

CEP Attributes Mapping:

Term project selection and software tutorials:

•  Any project involving thermal analysis can be selected for this term project. Examples of applications involving thermal analysis are:

–    One dimensional/multidimensional conduction analysis for plane wall (single/composite), cylinder or spherical container or any other application.

–    External convection analysis over flat plate, cylinder, sphere, aerofoil, tube bank/electronic equipment cooling etc.

–    Internal convection analysis for flows inside pipes, ducts etc.

–    Analysis of heat exchangers i.e. counter flow heat exchangers, shell and tube heat exchangers etc..

•  Generally, ANSYS workbench and COMSOL software are used for thermal analysis.

•  Tutorial for beginners for ANSYS can be found on the following link:

https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/SIMULATION/FLUENT%20Learning%20Modules

•  Many video tutorials involving conduction, convection and heat exchanger analysis are available on Youtube which can also serve as an idea to choose for your term project. For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFyYlKOZ1T0

•  The title of your project needs to be finalized and shared with me through CR, before 10 December 2025. In case of uncooperative group members, please report them.

Submission Guidelines

•  You are required to submit this project (a typed report and simulations files) in a zip file and submitted to CR by 29 December 2025 latest by midnight. Marks for late submissions will be deducted.

•  The project report must be on following sections/format:

–    Title Page: contain the title of project and group member names along with their individual contribution in this project.

–    Abstract: contain a summary of the objectives of the project, simulations techniques employed, and overview of main results and conclusions.

–    Introduction: contain the practical importance of the project and a brief discussion about the underlying engineering principles/equations governing the problem to be analyzed.

–    Methodology: contain a detailed description of the mesh, models, boundary condi- tions, initial conditions, convergence criterion with the help of figures/snaps used for the simulations.

–    Results and Discussion: contain results of the simulations and relevant discussion about the physical interpretation of the results. Try to correlate the results with the theoretical knowledge gained during the HMT course.

–    Conclusion and Recommendation: contain a brief conclusion of the results and recommendations for future work on this project.

–    Contributions: Details of how the work was subdivided and the contribution of each group member.

•  Marks are allocated as follows: