OLGA HEAT TRANSFER REVIEW

MODELING OF BURIED PIPELINES WITH STANDARD OLGA MODEL

The standard OLGA model assumes that heat transfer flows with a constant flux in the
radial direction. A series of concentric wall layers with given thicknesses and heat
transfer properties are assumed for the pipe.

For a buried pipeline, the heat flux is not symmetrical. To simulate a buried pipeline in
the standard OLGA model, a pseudo-thickness of the soil is needed to account for the
asymmetries of the system. It is also possible to simulate the heat transfer in a buried
pipeline using the enhanced soil heat transfer module, but this discussion will center on
the use of the standard OLGA model.

The equation for heat transfer in a buried pipeline is:

k soil
hsoil 
D 2H (1)
cosh 1 ( )
2 D

where: hsoil = heat transfer coefficient of soil

ksoil = thermal conductivity of soil
D = outside diameter of buried pipe
H = distance between top of soil and center of pipe

The term cosh-1(x) can be approximated by:

cosh 1 ( x )  ln( x  ( x 2  1) 0.5 ) for x > 1 (2)

For heat transfer for a series of concentric layers, the value of the heat transfer coefficient
for the soil is given by:

k soil
hsoil 
D D2 (3)
ln( )
2 D

where D2 = Equivalent diameter of soil layer

Equating the values of hsoil from equations (1) and (3), and substituting the expression in
equation (2) for the cosh-1(x) gives:

2H 2H 2
D2  D (( )  (( )  1) 0.5 ) (4)
D D

This expression gives the following values for D2/D as a function of H/D:

H/D D2/D
1.0 3.73
1.5 5.83
2.0 7.87
2.5 9.90
3.0 11.92
4.0 15.94
5.0 19.95
6.0 23.96

The equivalent thickness of the soil layer for use in the concentric layer calculation would
be:

t equiv  0.5( D2  D ) (5)

where tequiv = equivalent thickness of soil layer for concentric layer

calculations

It is useful to look at a ratio of the equivalent thickness to the burial depth. The burial
depth, BD, is defined as the distance from the top of the soil to the top of the pipe.
Solving equations (4) and (5) with the added relationship

BD  H  0.5D (6)

gives the following table:

BD/D Tequiv/BD
0.5 2.73
1.0 2.42
1.5 2.29
2.0 2.23
2.5 2.18
3.5 2.13
4.5 2.11
5.5 2.09
As the burial depth increases, the ratio of the equivalent thickness of soil for the
concentric layer calculation to the burial depth approaches a value of 2.

An alternative approach to modeling buried pipelines would be to assume that the

thickness of the soil layer is equal to the burial depth. An equivalent value of the thermal
conductivity of the soil would be calculated from equations (1) and (3) to account for the
asymmetry of the soil layer. A comparison of the predictions done with this method vs.
the equivalent soil thickness method shown above indicated that the two methods gave
the same steady state results. The equivalent thermal conductivity method, however,
showed much more rapid cooling for shutdown cases, due to the decreased mass of the
soil layer. We recommend that the equivalent soil thickness method be used if the
concentric layer heat transfer model is used.