Heat Transfer Simulation

Every year hundreds of research papers are written on the subject of heat transfer. Of the three modes of heat transfer, conduction, convection and radiation, convection is possibly the least well understood. Convection is the transfer of heat by motion in a fluid. Most fluid flows in nature and in engineering are turbulent and turbulence is a form of chaos. It is this chaos that makes convection so difficult to understand and to predict. The simple problem of a turbulent boundary layer on a heated flat plate is still far from understood. All turbulent boundary layers begin as laminar boundary layers, but when does transition occur and what are the controlling factors? In CFD programs the most common way of dealing with turbulent boundary layers, the assumption of a logarithmic layer, was formulated before the era of the digital computer. In problems involving convection heat transfer, computational results should always be viewed with caution.

Atkinson Science has many years of experience in solving problems involving all three modes of heat transfer. We are aware of the limitations of current modelling methods and the need to choose carefully between different approaches in order to achieve the highest level of accuracy. Click on the links below to read some of our case studies or contact us to discuss a problem involving heat transfer. Contact us.