Wednesday, 29 June 2016

COFFEE MUG THERMAL ANALYSIS

Modern day manufacturers are extensively focussing on producing light weight components using good testing methods. Heat and Mass transfer is a key area for any product development and material selection next to structural simulation.

The Coffee Mug is a typical example to study the Temperature & Modes of Heat Transfer. The mug is formed to hold liquids within the walls resulting in gain or loss of thermal energy for the heat conduction. Temperature is a scalar quantity, where only one degree of freedom is required to study on the models. The resulting temperature are differentiated for temperature gradients & calculates the heat flux based on the thermal conductivity of the material.


The Thermal analysis present in SolidWorks Simulation deals with the Heat Flow in a Solid body governing the enter and exit of temperature on that body. The entering & Exit of temperature is studied by the conduction, convection & radiation modes. For this simple example, liquid heat flows through the wall with the surrounding ambient air. The Natural convection is considered for the fluid movement from becoming Hot to Cold. The heat transfer is studied with the help of Thermal transient analysis to stabilize the temperature on the cup with the fluid for time period.

The cup is made up of ceramic porcelain material with thermal conductivity value of 1.5W/m.K. The inside fluid temperature is considered to be 70°C with the ambient temperature of 30°C for 2 minutes of time.

Thermal analysis in SolidWorks Simulation calculates the temperature and heat transfer within and between components in your design and its environment. This is an important consideration of design, as many products and material have temperature dependent properties. Product safety is also a consideration-if a product or component gets too hot, you may have to design a guard over it. Thus, to overcome all the temperature effects for product design, SolidWorks Simulation is useful in solving problems.