The Simulation of Temperature Distribution in a Ground Heat Exchanger—GHE Using the Autodesk CFD Simulation Program

Abstract

The simulation of the temperature distribution in the ground heat exchanger was carried out using Autodesk Inventor and CFD Simulation programs. The “Inventor” program has built a ground geometry model of a heat exchanger based on an existing exchanger. CFD Simulation analyzes the effect of structures on airflow in two-phase (air-stone) air and bed temperature distribution. The program defines the materials that comprise the building, defines the boundary conditions and the initial operation of the ground heat exchanger. In order to optimize the work of the deposit, multi-variable scenarios with different initial parameters were designed: changing the temperature and speed of the air supplied to the exchanger. The section planes have been defined for visualization of air velocity vectors and additional cross-sectional planes with temperature field distributions. The obtained results of the temperature fields from the multivariant simulation were compared with the actual temperature distribution. The actual temperature distribution was obtained from the GHE digital temperature gauges installed at the time of assembly.