General Question: Error of simulation
General Question: Error of simulation
(OP)
Hi,
I was asked a general question: how much error between simulation results and experimental data can be considered as accurate? I'm really not sure how to answer this question. My area is thermal analysis. Does anyone working on thermal have some thoughts on that?
Thanks,
Danny
I was asked a general question: how much error between simulation results and experimental data can be considered as accurate? I'm really not sure how to answer this question. My area is thermal analysis. Does anyone working on thermal have some thoughts on that?
Thanks,
Danny





RE: General Question: Error of simulation
than for structural (deformation) simulation.
RE: General Question: Error of simulation
You are also routinely making worst case assumptions or analyzing worst case conditions. What are the odds that your experimental setup is representative of that?
RE: General Question: Error of simulation
RE: General Question: Error of simulation
- How is the bar being supported? Supports can be a path for heat flow through conduction, if it is in an oven that may heat it up faster, if it is being resistively heated the supports may act like a heat sink, lowering the temperature.
- How is the bar being heated? Resistive heating is relatively easy to model, a heating coil will create non uniform temperature distribution so moving your thermocouple around will change the experimental result. An oven would also create a non uniform temperature through the thickness of the bar. If the bar is out in the open are there any air currents?
- Are you taking natural convection into account in you analysis?
- What orientation is the bar? If vertical the top will be hotter than the bottom by a couple degrees at least.
In general though, I would consider any result from CFD that was accurate to 0.5 - 2C pretty darn good. In my line of work that would be more than sufficient since we would typically want a much greater margin than that to determine that the performance of the design is acceptable.
RE: General Question: Error of simulation
is 2/80 = 2.5% that seems very acceptable to me. Did you model the bar in Ansys Mechanical or CFX/Fluent?