Analysis of Thermal Convection for a Large Scale Cryogenic Tank Demonstrator in OpenFOAM

Kurzfassung

Within the scope of this thesis a CFD model is developed to qualitatively described a stratification experiment performed at the DLR. To understand the physical effects the theoretical background for heat transfer, phase change and turbulence modeling is given. The stratification phenomenon is presented with a literature overview. In addition to the theoretical principle, the existing flow pattern and an overview about the present research in experiments and simulations is given. The research on stratification of cryogenic fluids is still in progress. Several up to now essential publications are from the Apollo era, especially for flow pattern. The drawback of these papers is that they discuss the stratifcation of water instead of a cryogenic liquid. Furthermore, especially the simulation of stratification in cryogenic tanks is a rather less researched field.