Numerical Study on Thermal Field in Concrete with Cooling Pipe Based on the Coupling Method

Abstract

A finite element method was developed to reveal the thermal characteristics of concrete with a cooling pipe, and the influence of cooling pipe on thermal field was calculated by the coupled fluid flow and solid heat transfer method. Temperature distribution along the pipeline was calculated and the mean Nusselt numbers on each section in the cooling pipe also were obtained. Numerical results show that the flow field and the temperature distribution were very complexly and the heat transfer was severely attenuated in the bend position, the outboard temperature of pipe was higher than the inboard temperature. In addition, in order to study the effect of the cooling pipe on thermal distribution, the temperature of different positions at the hydration time were compared with the no cooling results. The present results could be helpful to predict the temperature cracks in structure engineering.