Inspiration
Heat exchangers are important equiptments in plants and factories as they are central to cooling and warming working fluids. So, we tried to simulate the heat transfer happening inside a heat exchanger.
What it does
Our code provides an interactive user-friendly environment, that lets the user to visualize and understand how the temperature profile of the streams inside a heat exchanger vary through time. Also, it enables user to see how different heat exchangers (co-current vs. counter current) work in terms of efficiency in cooling/warming.
How I built it
The first prototype was programmed in python3. Then we recoded it in C++ and built the gui with OpenGL.
Challenges I ran into
First, we coded the program in python and visualized it using the python library "matplotlib", which turned out to be slow. So, we recoded the program in C++ and built the gui with OpenGL which was way faster.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
What I learned
Since we weren't much familiar with C++ and OpenGL, we learned a great deal programming in these languages. Also, it was our very first gui programming which helped us to understand the related concepts and technical issues.
What's next for Double Pipe Heat Exchanger
An extension to 2-dimensional simulation would be perfect.
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