Open Access

ARTICLE

Calculation of Mass Concrete Temperature Containing Cooling Water Pipe Based on Substructure and Iteration Algorithm

Heng Zhang^1,2, Chao Su^2,*, Zhizhong Song¹, Zhenzhong Shen^1,2, Huiguang Lei³

1 Changjiang Institute of Survey, Planning, Design and Research, Wuhan, 430010, China
2 College of Water Conservancy and Hydropower Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China
3 Chief Engineer Office, Wujiang Company of Goupitan Power Construction Cooperation, Yuqing, 564408, China

* Corresponding Author: Chao Su. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Advanced Computational Models for Decision-Making of Complex Systems in Engineering)

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2024, 138(1), 813-826. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2023.030055

Received 21 March 2023; Accepted 22 May 2023; Issue published 22 September 2023

Abstract

Mathematical physics equations are often utilized to describe physical phenomena in various fields of science and engineering. One such equation is the Fourier equation, which is a commonly used and effective method for evaluating the effectiveness of temperature control measures for mass concrete. One important measure for temperature control in mass concrete is the use of cooling water pipes. However, the mismatch of grids between large-scale concrete models and small-scale cooling pipe models can result in a significant waste of calculation time when using the finite element method. Moreover, the temperature of the water in the cooling pipe needs to be iteratively calculated during the thermal transfer process. The substructure method can effectively solve this problem, and it has been validated by scholars. The Abaqus/Python secondary development technology provides engineers with enough flexibility to combine the substructure method with an iteration algorithm, which enables the creation of a parametric modeling calculation for cooling water pipes. This paper proposes such a method, which involves iterating the water pipe boundary and establishing the water pipe unit substructure to numerically simulate the concrete temperature field that contains a cooling water pipe. To verify the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method, two classic numerical examples were analyzed. The results showed that this method has good applicability in cooling pipe calculations. When the value of the iteration parameter is 0.4, the boundary temperature of the cooling water pipes can meet the accuracy requirements after 4~5 iterations, effectively improving the computational efficiency. Overall, this approach provides a useful tool for engineers to analyze the temperature control measures accurately and efficiently for mass concrete, such as cooling water pipes, using Abaqus/Python secondary development.

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