Efficacy of SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation for use in thermal management and propulsion systems cooling of unmanned aircraft systems

Abstract

As the capabilities of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) expand, optimizing the thermal management designs become increasingly important. SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation is a powerful and accessible tool that has the potential to accelerate prototyping for thermal management systems. This paper begins with analyzing a simple, flat plate, forced convection heat transfer problem using the software, and compares it to theoretical and experimental data. Once the baseline settings are determined, increasingly complex parameters needed to analyze an UAS are tested. The analysis proved to be capable of providing good qualitative results that predicted physical phenomena seen in experimental data given a fine enough mesh. However, there are many shortcomings and pitfalls in the software that a user must beware. Furthermore, good 3D analysis was difficult to achieve. Either providing only qualitatively good results or outright failing depending on the other settings. Therefore, it was determined that the software, if used carefully, is capable of analyzing certain 2D heat transfer problems, but further investigation is needed before using the software to analyze 3D models and eventually an UAS.