Numerical Simulation and Design of a High-Temperature, High-Pressure Fluid Transport Pipe

Abstract

When designing a hand caliber with a high-temperature, high-pressure internal fluid transport pipe, reliability, safe use, and performance must be considered. Reliability refers to the stress caused by thermo-mechanical load; safe use refers to the low-temperature burns that might occur upon contact, and high-temperature burns caused by gas leakage occurring in the cylinder gap; and performance refers to projectile velocity. In this study, numerical simulation methods for heat transfer, structure analysis, and gas leakage are proposed so that solutions can be designed to account for the above three criteria. Furthermore, a hand-caliber design guide is presented. For heat transfer and structural analysis, mesh size, the transient convective heat transfer coefficient, and boundary conditions are described. Regarding gas leakage, methods reflecting projectile motion and determination of the molecular weight of the propellant are described. As a result, a designed hand caliber will have a high reliability, because the thermo-mechanical stress is lower than the yield stress. There will be little risk of low-temperature burns, but there will be a high temperature-burn risk, owing to gas leakage in the cylinder gap. The larger the cylinder-gap size, the greater the gas leakage and the smaller projectile velocity. The presented numerical simulation method can be applied to evaluate various aspects of other structures that require high-temperature, high-pressure fluid-transport pipes.