COUPLED THERMOFLUID ANALYSIS METHOD WITH APPLICATION TO THERMODYNAMICVENT SYSTEMS

Many practical thermofluid systems involve multiple solid materials an d fluid media with vastly differing thermal properties, Thermal and fl uid now analysis in such systems requires a numerical method capable o f coupling all participating solid materials and fluid media together, In this article, such a numerical method is presented, The method is based on the multidomain finite volume formulation. Different material s or fluids are represented with different computational domains. A no vel implicit coupling procedure at regular and conjugate heal transfer interfaces is designed to obtain the solutions simultaneously and eff iciently. The numerical method is first validated against a natural co nvection between thick-walled eccentric tubes, It is then applied to a nalyze a zero-G thermodynamic vent system. The preliminary three-dimen sional analysis results are presented and the thermodynamic characteri stics are discussed.