![pipesim demo pipesim demo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7V7rASXfQjo/hqdefault.jpg)
If we zoom in, we can see the flow does indeed go down one tube and up the adjacent tube.Ī plot of the inlet and outlet temperatures shows the amount of heat stored in the soil. After one year, we calculated the following temperature contours. The initial temperature was 25 C and the injected water was at 84 C. We used different materials to represent the vertical tubes, the horizontal tube, and the impermeable caps required at the tube joints. The model took advantage of symmetry and we radially refined the cells near the tubes to capture the radial heat transfer from the tubes to the soil. To test this approach, we made a model of two U-tube wells. So it is possible to simulate flow in a tube by only allowing flow along the axis of the tube, while still including heat transfer normal to the axis of the tube. However, TOUGH2 does allow permeabilities to be anisotropic and specified in the X, Y, and Z directions. This led to some very small cells and related convergence problems. The first approach was to represent the tube walls using impermeable material and then have high porosity material inside the tubes for the pipe flow and a normal soil model outside the tubes.
#PIPESIM DEMO HOW TO#
One challenge of the simulation is how to model the flow in the tubes, which is separated from the flow in the soil. Flow enters the connected system and then is either cooled or heated by heat transfer to the soil. Each well is connected by horizontal tubing.
![pipesim demo pipesim demo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7V7rASXfQjo/mqdefault.jpg)
The tubes in each well are close together, with flow down one tube and up the adjacent tube. Shallow wells (about 40 m depth) are dug and U-shaped pipes inserted into each well. However, PetraSim (TOUGH2) does offer some unique advantages to simulate complex heat transfer in the soil, including the potential heat transport due to groundwater flow.Ī schematic of the problem is show below. The pipe geometry would need to be approximated and if conduction is the dominant mechanism in the soil, there might be other codes that could do a good job.
![pipesim demo pipesim demo](https://demo.vdocuments.mx/img/378x509/reader024/reader/2021010304/5459dddeb1af9f39378b5a20/r-1.jpg)
#PIPESIM DEMO CODE#
When I first saw this problem, I thought that PetraSim (TOUGH2) might not be the best code for the solution. I thought it would be interesting to show one approach to simulating fluid flow in tubes (pipes) with heat conduction into the surrounding soil. We recently had a customer request for some help with a shallow geothermal model.