Development of a User-Friendly Virtual Laboratory for Simulating Three-Dimensional Transient Heat Transfer in Regularly Shaped Solids

Abstract

In this project, Matlab® computational and visualization tools were used to develop user-friendly software, called 3D Transient Heat Flow. With this interactive software, the students can run a wide variety of the experiments with different materials, boundary conditions and geometry at transient conditions. It is interesting to note that running some of these experiments in traditional labs is impossible. The software presents experimental results in colored graphical diagrams as well as tables and charts, which can be compared easily with the results of previous experiments. In order to evaluate and validate the reliability of the software, a case study is considered, in which the results obtained using the software are compared with those obtained using computational fluid dynamics code, such as the Fluent® package.

Transforming traditional teaching laboratories for effective remote delivery—A review

“…In engineering and science disciplines, virtual experiments have been used for teaching concepts related to physics (Darrah et al, 2014;Olympiou and Zacharia, 2012), protein structures (Doak et al, 2020), reaction kinetics (Bennie et al, 2019), plastic deformation (Brophy et al, 2013), metal forming processes (Sharma, 2016), machining (Li et al, 2018) and heat transfer visualization (Ayatollahi et al, 2008).…”

A contemporary course on the introduction to computational fluid dynamics

“…The use of CFD is very popular in Mechanical Engineering programs that involve heat transfer. For example, Junaidi et al 5 used finite volume approaches to solve heat transfer problems, Jithish and Kumar 6 used CFD for heat transfer oriented problems and course development, Zamora et al 7 integrated CFD into the heat transfer curriculum using a Matlab approach, and Ayatollahi et al 8 used Matlab to create a digital laboratory that coincides with the heat transfer experiments at Shiraz University. CFD has also been combined into the curriculum without creating a stand-alone elective.…”