[CFD] Convection (Heat Transfer Coefficient) Boundary Conditions

A brief overview of convection (heat transfer coefficient) boundary conditions in CFD. Convection boundary conditions are available in the majority of mainstream CFD codes (ANSYS Fluent, ANSYS CFX, OpenFOAM, Star CCM etc) and are useful for heat transfer analysis. The following topics are covered in the video:

1) 01:25 What is a convection boundary condition?

2) 09:49 How does a convection boundary condition work?

3) 16:35 How do you calculate the external heat transfer coefficient?

4) 28:14 What is the difference between the internal heat transfer coefficient and the external heat transfer coefficient?

#convectionBoundary #heatTransferCoefficient #fluidmechanics101
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Some useful references

1. F. Incropera, D. DeWitt, T. Bergman, A. Lavine, 'Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer Hardcover', John Wiley & Sons, 6th Edition (1 Sept. 2006)

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Disclaimer
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The methods, algorithms, equations, formulae, diagrams and explanations in this talk are for educational and demonstrative purposes only. They should never be used to analyse, design, accredit or validate real scientific / engineering / mathematical structures and flow systems. For such applications, appropriate trained, qualified and accredited (SQEP) engineers / scientists should be consulted along with the appropriate documentation, procedures and engineering standards. Furthermore, the information contained within this talk has not been verified, peer reviewed or checked in any way and is likely to contain several errors. It is therefore not appropriate to use this talk itself (or any of the algorithms, equations, formulae, diagrams and explanations contained within this talk) as an academic or technical reference. The reader should consult the original references and follow the verification and validation processes adopted by your company / institution when carrying out engineering calculations and analyses. Fluid Mechanics 101 and Dr. Aidan Wimshurst are not accountable or liable in any form for the use or misuse of the information contained in this talk beyond the specific educational and demonstrative purposes for which it was intended.

[jimmyalmacddissi]

I’m an active engineer doing CFD and heat transfer for thermal systems design. This is an excellent video and I really liked the format. I’ve been looking for a good description of this type of problem for a while. Well done!

[Silavite]

Splendid explanation, thank you for the video!

(One side note: At 13:27 I couldn't help but smile a bit when I heard 25 - 30 °C described as a, "hot day.")

[Dz]

This really confirms my hypothesis /suspicion regarding how this boundary condition works. You are a savior, thank you

[arashzandian]

Hi Aidan; thanks for your awesome CFD videos. I watched many of your videos - especially the ones about different turbulence and heat transfer models - to refresh my memory for many fluid mechanics and CFD topics and to get ready for a job interview for a CFD Engineer position at Tesla. I'm fortunate to say that I got an offer from them and am soon to start my career at this position. As a token of appreciation, I would like to support your channel. Please let me know how a viewer like me can help out the channel. Cheers

[tejesdas]

Fantastic presentation, so lucid. An example is always better. Thank you.

[ramkumarvenkatachalam]

Hi Aidan, Really appreciate it. Got the clarity. So useful as I was trying to simulate a Conjugate heat transfer problem with convection boundary condition.
Cheers!

[kailashrangaraj]

This is one of the best videos, that I can ever watch

[SHUBHAMMISHRA]

Yes. It is very useful. Specially the way you had shown the fluent and OpenFoam settings is awesome.

[DrFatinMunirah]

Happy to hear regarding Finite Element Method

[sanjaykumaryadav]

Yes sir it was really helpful. Thank you sir.

[amirulislam]

This video is very helpful for my you so much.

[alesh]

Thanks man, you are a legend. so nice explained.

[rafaortwein]

Nice lecture. It would be nice to see an example with meshed air and the convection plume resolved.

[foambuilder]

Thank you for the video. I have a question: if I would like to run a laplacianFOAM simulation, how could I impose a free convection BC?

[Unknown-kpgh]

Thank you for every video. Please can you make video about evaporation-condensation phenomena inside a heat pipe (closed pipe).

[arjunprasanthU]

Excellent video sir. I have a battery that is discharging. As it discharges, it generates heat which is dissipated into the cooling medium. While the heat generated in the battery is captured by meshing it and using an MSMD plug in that introduces a heat source term in the battery component related cell zones, can I still use the "External heat transfer coefficient to capture heat dissipation ?"

[МаусЦзэдун]

The disadvantage of this boundary condition is that the average coefficient on the surface is assigned.
If it is important to know the local temperature distribution, it is better to use a direct calculation of the heat transfer coefficient.

[EngLhag]

Nice recap. It's sad that my former heat transfer simulations didn't have a constant heat flux coefficient for me to use because I had fluctuations in fluid velocity XD A complete mess.

[soumiabaalicherif]

hello, thank you for your videos really good work, i have quastion about heat transfer coefficient inner suface
how can'i calculate Tw and Tref please, i need your help

[airil]

Thanks for the explanation. Just out of curiosity, if the internal heat transfer coefficient inside CFD is post calculated from the solution of temperature, how CFD calculate the heat transfer between the cells. Does it compute based on the temperature wall function and thermal diffussity alpha = k/rho/cp. Is this alpha user input? Does CFD treat these fluid properties as constant value or temperature dependent? In 1D from what I know to calculate inside temperature of flowing fluid user has to to calculate/ input the internal heat transfer as part of thermal resistance based on nusselt correlation