Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Production of Aerogels

Abstract

The Germany Airspace Center deal with the project ZAIT (Zentrum f¨ur Aerogele in Industrie und Technik) that involves modeling, production and optimization of the 800 L autoclave for solidification of the aerogels. The main goal of this research, is to conduct the CFD study of heat flow in autoclave and optimize the design an object between inlet and samples with aerogel in the way, to obtain laminar flow inside the slide-in box. We are focusing on the homogeneous flow for simultaneous curing of gels in order to obtain best physical properties and lowest number of defect of aerogels samples. Another important phenomenon during solidification process in this research is supercritical drying and carbon dioxide physical properties, which we will consider more closely in this thesis. After the theoretical observations and CFD study of flow, the calculation of all needed for the numerical simulation parameters of CO2 will be conduct; on the next part the some tests models will be observed and analysed based on the numerical software results and the final model, with the most homogeneous velocity distribution and the lowest turbulence will be advised for the real implementation in the autoclave.