Below ground insulated pipe

[Anonymous]

I am trying to Model below ground insulated pipe: need help with modeling, and soil around insulated pipe has a constant temperautre and constant thermal conductivity value,

pipe is 36" steel (.375" thick)

insulation thickness is 1"

jacket over insulation is high density polythylene .200" thick

I have tried to draw this in autocad and then open DWG file in Autodesk simulation

Please provide me with some tips so I can make this easy

thanks for any advise

[Joey.X]

According your posted picture, here are some general suggestions for the thermal modeling

- using 2D model assuming the pipe is infinite long or long enough

- Model an CAD assembly with each material is a part so that each part has its own material properties.

- assume isotropic material properties at specifying material properties (this is default)

- ignore thermal contact between parts (this is default as well), you can turn this on back if the physical model has thermal contact between materials.

- specify thermal boundary conditions (depending you physical model)

   specify surfaces convection (mosy likely using this) or thermal BCs on outer surfaces near to the ground.

   part based heat generation BC if internal parts generates heat, e.g., joule heating due to electricity passes.  

- select steady or transient thermal analysis depending if you are interested on steady state solution or transient solution, and also model physical behaviors.

If you want to model the coupling among thermal, fluid flow, electricity etc, hen the coupling analysis may needed.

PS, you may need to supply more details about the physical model for more accurate modeling suggestions.