A standardized modeling strategy for heat current method-based analysis and simulation of thermal systems

Efficient modeling and simulation are important for analysis and optimization of thermal systems. In this work, we present a standardized heat current modeling strategy for the analysis of thermal systems, which consists of three steps: (1) construct preliminary system heat current model by converting traditional mass flow topologies of components to heat flow ones and connecting them with the same temperature nodes; (2) construct final system heat current model by applying the equivalent transformation on preliminary model based on the linearity of energy conservation law and the arbitrary reference point of absolute enthalpy values; (3) obtain global system constraints by applying Kirchhoff’s laws on the transformed model to describe the energy conservation, heat transfer and heat-work conversion characteristics. A numerical example of heat transfer system is used to briefly present the advantages of the heat current method in system simulation comparing to the conventional method. The equivalence between the obtained system constraints and component equations are also investigated to ensure the credibility of the heat current method. Furthermore, three regenerative systems are analyzed using the proposed strategy to investigate the effect of regeneration on the heat current model and the system performance.