Simplification method of thermal-fluid network with circulation reflux based on matrix operation

Modeling and simulation of thermal-fluid systems are very important in industrial numerical simulation and play key roles in their design and control. In this paper, the modeling and simplification method of one-dimensional thermal-fluid network with variable-property are presented, including matrix representation of the network, simplification algorithm for series/parallel connection based on matrix operation and generation of flow equations based on system topology. This simplification is suitable for the simulation of thermal-fluid systems with arbitrary topological structure. The method to treat reflux during iteration is proposed. The outstanding features of the simplification algorithm are the significant reduction in the thermal-fluid network and therefore the number of the related governing equations, as well as the computation burden. The example in this paper shows that the number of the governing equations for flow is reduced by about 45% and the calculation time of flow calculation is reduced by an average of 32% after the simplification.