Modeling Industrial Enclosures to Increase Equipment's Longevity
By Kelly Hile and Kevin Linfield, Ph.D., P.Eng., P.E.
Using industrial enclosures makes sense for a variety of applications, including engines, furnaces, gas turbines, compressors, and power pack systems. Important features to protect your equipment can include filters, silencers, fans, louvers, dampers, and/or radiators which help mitigate the common problems associate with these enclosures, such as:
- Pressure loss limits
- Noise
- Number of air exchanges
- Temperature limits.
Not all enclosures are optimized for these concerns, however, and the most common issue that Airflow Sciences is asked to investigate through flow modeling is temperature limits. Temperature, coming from the machinery itself or outside factors becomes an issue when overheating threatens equipment. Components that overheat can degrade performance over time and may result in mechanical failure or fires within the enclosures.
One modeling example, shown below, predicted the temperature inside a natural gas turbine enclosure.
Internal Factors
Battery energy storage systems (BESS) generate a significant amount of heat during charging and discharging. While fans are typically present, they are usually only located on one side of the enclosure, allowing for heat to become intense on the opposite end of the unit. As the racks of batteries heat up, hot spots occur where there is insufficient air exchanges. By using a CFD model to locate those hot spots, a BESS can be reconfigured to allow for proper airflow, saving equipment from unit failure or fire. Learn more about a BESS facility where thermal management was a concern to see what Airflow engineers did to optimize airflow.
External Factors
When enclosures are located outside, weather becomes an added factor in the longevity of your equipment. For example, hot summer temperatures can cause diesel generator components to overheat while cold temperatures introduce condensation and freezing. Both hot and cold can cause mechanical components to become inoperable. CFD modeling can evaluate thermal management problems like these using both steady state and transient analysis of flow and heat transfer.
During the design process of these enclosures, engineers need to accurately quantify the amount of air flow passing through intake grilles and louvers, as well as, the internal heating and cooling elements such as radiators and fans. These sub models can be used to determine resistance coefficients which are useful for handbook calculations and spreadsheet models.