Improved buried pipe element method for temperature-field calculation of mass concrete with cooling pipes

摘要

PurposeThe buried pipe element method can be used to calculate the temperature of mass concrete through highly efficient computing. However, in this method, temperatures along cooling pipes and the convection coefficient of the cooling pipe boundary should be improved to achieve higher accuracy. Thus, there is a need to propose a method for improvement.Design/methodology/approachAccording to the principle of heat balance and the temperature gradient characteristics of concrete around cooling pipes, a method to calculate the water temperature along cooling pipes using the buried pipe element method is proposed in this study. By comparing the results of a discrete algorithm and the buried pipe element method, it was discovered that the convection coefficient of the cooling pipe boundary for the buried pipe element method is only related to the thermal conductivity of concrete; therefore, it can be calculated by inverse analysis.FindingsThe results show that the buried pipe element method can achieve the same accuracy as the discrete method and simulate the temperature field of mass concrete with cooling pipes efficiently and accurately.Originality/valueThis new method can improve the calculation accuracy of the embedded element method and make the calculation results more reasonable and reliable.