Natural Convection Cooling of a Vacuum Flask
Application ID: 1448
The following example solves a pure conduction and a free-convection problem in which a vacuum flask holding hot coffee dissipates thermal energy. The main interest is to calculate the flask's cooling power; that is, how much heat it loses per unit time.
This tutorial model treats the natural convection cooling with two approaches:
- Using heat transfer coefficients to describe the thermal dissipation
- Modeling the buoyancy-driven flow of air outside the flask to describe the convective cooling
This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Specification Chart and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.