Investigation of the thermohydraulic systems in MATLAB & Simulink using developed library

University of West Bohemia, New Technologies Research Centre, Univerzitni 8, CZ 306 14 Plzen, Czech Republic

^a e-mail: vacibera@ntc.zcu.cz
^b e-mail: dlavicka@ntc.zcu.cz

Abstract

Recent developments in the designing of the thermohydraulic systems have heightened the need for special software tools. Possibility of incorporating the measured data, easy and quick rearrangement of the system and short simulation time play a key role in successful progress in designing of the thermohydraulic systems. Commercial software sometimes does not fit to our special tasks or it lacks some utilities. This paper attempts to show usefulness of MATLAB and Simulink in the development of the “drag and drop” software. In the Simulink it is possible to develop specialized libraries containing graphical blocks representing parts of the real systems. Easy cooling circuit was designed using developed graphical blocks. The main parts of the circuit consist of the heat source and heat exchanger/cooler. Another parts such as pumps, pipes and properties of the cooling medium etc. are taken into account in the investigated system. These results obtained by the developed software are presented for similar circuits with different heat exchangers/coolers. Simulations for different heat exchangers were solved with different initial conditions. These results are consequently compared. Characteristic properties (heating/cooling power and pressure drop according to flow rate) of the heat exchangers/coolers were obtained experimentally in our laboratory and by the numerical CFD simulation in ANSYS/FLUENT software.