Thermal Stress Simulations
Physixfactor has managed to avoid expensive maintenance cycles by investigating the thermal stress development in tubing systems for the petrochemical industry. During operation, sometimes the system must be cleaned and high temperature fluid are used to flush the system. Inducing peak stress which cause over time weak parts with a danger of leakage. Beacuse this should be avoided at all time the construction on the right was simulated for time dependent stresses during the heat cycle. We could propose a new way of mounting the pipes in order to avoid excessive stresses,
Thermal Stresses in a Heat Exchanger
Thermal stress cycles can lead to early fialure in heavy duty product as shown in this figure to the right. It is a heat exchanger for the chemical industry and apart from the fact that it should be resist to corrosion and should also withstand a high number of temperature cycles during its operational lifetime. With COMSOL we were able to trace the weak parts in the construction once the loads where investigated of the HEX in the field. The multiphysics approach of COMSOL is highly suitable for these type of thermal FEM simulations. Special attention was paid to the meshing of the product for a fast and robust convergence of the solver.
Thermal load of a vacuum window.
In the high tech industry vacuum windows allow production operators to look inside a process chamber. If laserbeams are used for probing purposes with high intensity one would like to have a window with a low absorption of the laser radiation. To the right in the figure a laserbeam penetrates through a window. If the intensity is high, despite a low absorption coefficient the window is heated, inducing stresses which can become high.
