A quasi-dynamic procedure for coupled thermal simulations

This paper outlines the development and adaptation of a coupling strategy for transient temperature analysis in a solid via a conjugate heat transfer method. This study proposes a quasi-dynamic coupling procedure to bridge the temporal disparities between the fluid and the solid. In this approach, dynamic thermal modeling in the solid is coupled with a sequence of steady states in the fluid. This quasi-dynamic algorithm has been applied to the problem of convective heat transfer over, and transient conduction heat transfer within, a flat plate using the severe thermal conditions of a solid propellant rocket. Two different coupled thermal computations have been performed. In the first onereferred to as the reference computationthe coupling period is equal to the smallest solid time constant. In the second one, a very large coupling period is used. The results show that the procedure can predict accurate transient temperature fields at a reasonable computational cost. The simulation CPU time is approximately reduced by up to 90%, while maintaining a very good accuracy. All the details of the numerical test case are given in the paper. This application illustrates the capabilities and the overall efficiency of this coupled approach in a solid transient problem using long term simulations of time dependent flows. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.