Numerical Heat Transfer, Part A: Applications

An International Journal of Computation and Methodology

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Thermal effect and optimal design of cooling pipes

on mass concrete with constant quantity of water
flow

Yongxing Hong , Ji Lin & Kambiz Vafai

To cite this article: Yongxing Hong , Ji Lin & Kambiz Vafai (2020): Thermal effect and optimal
design of cooling pipes on mass concrete with constant quantity of water flow, Numerical Heat
Transfer, Part A: Applications, DOI: 10.1080/10407782.2020.1805222

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10407782.2020.1805222

Published online: 21 Aug 2020.

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NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS
https://doi.org/10.1080/10407782.2020.1805222

Thermal effect and optimal design of cooling pipes on mass

concrete with constant quantity of water flow
Yongxing Honga,b, Ji Lina, and Kambiz Vafaib
a
State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, International Center for
Simulation Software in Engineering and Sciences, College of Mechanics and Materials, Hohai University,
Nanjing, P.R. China; bDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Riverside, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

To study the heat transfer of pipe cooling process in concrete, an effective Received 15 July 2020
model combined with a radial basis function collocation method (RBFCM) Accepted 30 July 2020
is proposed. In this model, a replicable fictitious structure is imported that
allows a set of fixed points to supersede the complicated adaptive remesh-
ing or redistributing points, which significantly saves a lot of time and
effort in the pre-processing of the numerical algorithm. Moreover, a rela-
tion between the mean temperature of water flow and the heat flux is
derived from a heat balance equation. The validity of the proposed model
is demonstrated in simulation of a typical three-dimensional problem.
Numerical solutions are compared with those obtained by the finite elem-
ent method and some experimental data. To find the optimum design, 32
cases involving 1 to 7 pipes under certain constraints are considered as fol-
lows: the quantity of water flow remains unchanged, the volume occupied
by pipes keeps the same, and the same initial temperature of water is
used for cooling. Since number, size, and positions of pipes are always
changing during the design process, the ability of this approach is further
illuminated. Finally, the effect of water flow with several conversing fre-
quencies is investigated. As expected, the maximum temperature differ-
ence in concrete can be further controlled by enlarging conversing
frequency. Numerical results reveal that the optimal design of pipe cooling
system can not only minimize temperature, but also control temperature
difference of the concrete structure. The process of design is useful for
guidance of engineering practice to improve the structural safety and the
economy of the whole building process.

1. Introduction
The embedded cooling pipe system has become one of the most effective tools to prevent thermal
cracks in mass concrete structures [1–3]. An efficient numerical simulation model can provide a
powerful function in design of cooling pipe system, which can reduce the amount of calculation
and accelerate the computation that is quite important for large-scale three-dimensional analysis.
To control the risk of unnecessary thermal hazards introduced by the enforced pipe cooling,
study of the pipe cooling problem has great theoretical and practical significance [4]. In the previ-
ous studies, the function of the cooling pipe had been considered as a negative heat source in the
concrete system [5]. According to engineering experience, the pipe cooling problem can be sig-
nificantly simplified by equivalent equations to indirectly depict the thermal field. Although this

CONTACT Kambiz Vafai vafai@engr.ucr.edu Department of Mechanical Engineering, A363 Bourns Hall, University of
California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92507 USA.
ß 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 Y. HONG ET AL.

model has brought great convenience, several disadvantages exist in its application. Thermal gra-
dient near cooling pipes is one of the most important reference factors but it has been neglected
[6]. The other ignored significant factor is the temperature of the cooling flow that is changing
along the pipe. It is because the accurate calculation of the above factors will cost a lot of efforts
[7, 8].
In numerical study of pipe cooling problem, simulation of temperature around cooling pipes
has become one of the most important parts. Among various numerical simulation methods, the
finite element method (FEM) has become the most successful method in numerical simulation
with strong generality. In theory, the FEM is feasible for most of heat conduction problems, even
in complex structures [9]. The pipe cooling problem, however, involves large scale-radio problems
on two directions. One is the direction perpendicular to the cooling pipe caused by the small size
of pipe embedded in a large scale concrete. The other is the direction along the water pipe that
could be a large aspect-ratio problem. By the FEM, encryption grids near the pipes must be
deployed, the water flow should be modeled as a fluid dynamic problem, and huge data transmis-
sion should be conducted all the time between the models of the concrete structure and the pipes.
It brings difficulties to the programing, meanwhile, consumes large amount of CPU and com-
puter storage, which seriously affects the calculation efficiency of the algorithm [10]. Of course,
the most difficult and time consuming process of the FEM is meshing. There are several attempts
to utilize different shapes of elements and reasonable models to simplify and accelerate the mesh-
ing process [11–14]. Although some good results have been reported, most of these algorithms
are still time consuming and just focus on cases with just one pipe and a simplified cross section
model. There is rarely application of the FEM to design of a cooling pipe system considering the
exact effects of the cooling flow.
Besides the FEM, radial basis function collocation method (RBFCM) has been a popular
method for heat conduction problems [15–17]. Different from the FEM, the RBFCM approxi-
mates the physical quantities with a linear combination of radial basis functions rather than
mesh. There exists some good characteristics in RBFCM, such as smoothness and positive definite
matrix. The RBFs are only related to distance between collocation points, but not to the exact
location of collocation points. So, it can be easily extended and applied to high-dimensional prob-
lems [18]. Moreover, the RBFCM is welcomed as an algorithm with infinite accuracy [19]. The
matrix constructed in the RBFCM, however, can be full dense with high condition number, which
limits its application in large-scale engineering problems. In addition, the determination of shape
parameters in RBFs has always been the main obstacle to the application of the RBFCM [20–22].
To solve large-scale engineering problems, a localized scheme (RBF-FD) has been developed
[23]. Although some calculation accuracy is lost generally, the localized scheme improves the cal-
culation efficiency and reduces the sensitivity of the method to shape parameters [24]. It is noted
that the accuracy of the LRBFCM can be still high due to the good characteristics of RBFs men-
tioned before. Studies have shown the feasibility of the LRBFCM in solving heat conduction
problems and the problems in complex domains [25–28]. Recently, researchers mainly focus on
two-dimensional and simplified three-dimensional pipe cooling problems in mass concrete
[29, 30]. The simplified problems however cannot present the heat transfer through the pipe wall
and the temperature rise of water flow along the pipe. Only solutions of actual three-dimensional
model can reflect the real situations that were scarcely reported by meshless methods. It is
because that applying meshless methods to three-dimensional large scale-radio heat conduction
problems is still a challenge work that requires huge computational expenditures for simulating.
As for the three-dimensional pipe cooling problem, the involved large scale-radio problems
let almost meshless methods be in face of ill-condition and large matrix, because the collocation
points should be very intensive along and around the pipes. Inevitably, it requires adaptive mesh-
ing or distributing points [31]. During optimization of cooling pipe system, the whole considered
factors, such as size, number, and position of pipes, should be modulated many times. So, the
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 3

Figure 1. The schematic view of self-correcting model for a typical concrete box with a cooling pipe.

adaptive rearrangement of the used elements or collocation points must be rearranged accord-
ingly, which takes up a lot of time and even more complicates the case.
Therefore, this study mainly focuses on developing an efficient model for three-dimensional
pipe cooling process to overcome above large scale-radio problems, where the RBF-FD acts as an
alternative meshless tool. The temperature rise of the cooling flow along the pipe is also studied.
Compared with the traditional model, we provide a simple and effective model to avoid difficul-
ties for adaptive remeshing or redistributing points. The advantages of the proposed model are
forecasted and shown during its application. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is applied to
design of cooling pipe system under certain constrains. During optimization of the cooling pipe
system, the situations with respect to different size, number, position of pipes, and even thermal
effect of conversing water flow are investigated.
The contents of the article are listed as follows: A self-correcting model (SCM) coupled with
water temperature rise along a pipe is proposed in Section 2. Section 3 describes the numerical
scheme and Section 4 presents several examples. Then, we make conclusions in Section 5.

2. Mathematical model
In this section, a typical concrete block is considered with a cooling pipe running through its cen-
ter, as shown in Figure 1(a). Figure 1 exhibits the schematic view of the proposed self-correcting
model for this cooling concrete. Up to our experience on numerical simulation of the two-dimen-
sional simplified pipe cooling problem [32], it can be assumed that the temperature of concrete
on the pipe wall Tp is just subject to a small area around the pipe during a short time period.
The above assumption is contributed by the poor heat transfer performance of concrete, the high
heat flux from concrete to water, and the small size of the pipe. Under the assumption, a small
cylinder area around each pipe is separated out, as seen in Figure 1(b), that is a large enough
control area retaining the features of the concrete and the cooling pipe. Then, it is cut into sev-
eral slices as shown in Figure 1(c). Figure 1(d) is the area that represents one of the slices, where
Cv is a virtual boundary with adiabatic condition bv ¼ 0. This boundary is like the artificial
boundary that is usually applied in the infinite domain problems. By solving the problem as
described in (d), Tp can be obtained. Then, the whole thermal field of concrete can be solved in
(a), including Tv – the temperature on Cv. With Tv and Tp, instead of convection boundary
4 Y. HONG ET AL.

conditions in (d), the Direchlet boundary condition then can be covered and the results in each
slice are corrected. This correcting process is quite importance, since exact Tv is not only influ-
enced by the cooling pipe but also influenced by other parts of the whole physical region. So, the
proposed model is named as self-correcting model. A successful application of the self-correcting
model in two-dimensional problems has been reported [32]. After correcting process, the tem-
perature of each slice can be applied to further simulation.
Embarking on the self-correcting model, the following three steps are performed: 1. Based on
water temperature Tw, the temperature on pipe Tp is solved in (d); 2. Based on Tp, the whole
thermal field is solved in (a), including the temperature on the virtual boundary Tv; 3. Based on
Tv and Tp, the thermal field in (d) can be corrected, then turn back to step 1 to calculate the
next Tp.
From the above steps, we can forecast that the proposed model has the following advantages:
(1) Model (d) is a replicable independent model that can replace the local encrypted grids or
points, which significantly simplifies the process of adaptive meshing or distributing points; (2)
When the position of any pipe is modulated, the mesh or collocation points in Model (d) remains
unchanged that is easy to use without complex rearrangement of meshes or points. (3) Meshless
methods can be easily used in the proposed model. (4) The valid data, such as Tp and Tv, can be
reused to ensure the accuracy of the algorithm.

2.1. Governing equation and boundary conditions

The governing equation in concrete is
qc Cc @T ðx, y, z, sÞ @hðsÞ
¼ Kc r2 T ðx, y, z, sÞ þ qc Cc , ðx, y, zÞ 2 X, (1)
@s @s
@h s
where r2 is Laplace operator r2 ¼ @x@ 2 þ @y@ 2 þ @z@ 2 , T means temperature, qcCc @sð Þ represents the
generation rate of hydration heat, h is adiabatic temperature rise that could be obtained by
experiment [33], and Kc, qc, and Cc are thermal properties of concrete, including heat conductiv-
ity, density, and specific heat capacity. The third kind boundary condition is used to depict heat
loss or gain through surfaces of concrete (Se) subject to different environments, yielding
@T ðx, y, zÞ

Kc ¼ be Te  T ðx, y, zÞ , ðx, y, zÞ 2 Se , (2)
@n
where n is the normal vector, Te means temperature of environment, and be is heat convection
coefficient from concrete to its contact environment, such as ba, bf, and bw are the coefficients
with respect to the air, the formwork, and the water.

2.2. Water temperature along a pipe

It is assumed that the water flow running through the cooling pipe is laminar. Since it is an
enforced cooling process, the Newtonian law of cooling could be applied in simulation of heat
transfer from concrete to pipe cooling system, which can be written as
ðð
dQ ¼ 2pRout Qc dl dt, (3)

where Rout/Rin is the outer/internal radius of pipe and Qc is the heat flux from concrete to pipe
cooling system. According to Eq. (2), we have
@T
Qc ¼ Kc ¼ bw ðTc  Tw Þ, (4)
@n
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 5

Figure 2. The schematic view of water flow along a pipe – a rotational symmetry view.

where Tw/Tc is the temperature of water/concrete and bw is the heat transfer coefficient.
According to the heat balance equation, dQ can be written as
dQ ¼ dQw þ dQs , (5)
where dQw is the energy change of water and dQs means the energy detained in the steel pipe. Since
a time-dependent problem is considered, it is assumed that an additional heat, dQs, should be input
into the steel pipe to keep the temperature difference between the pipe wall and the water flow.
Figure 2 displays the schematic view of water flow along a pipe, where the pipe is evenly div-
ided into N sections and the length of each section is Dl. During a section of water flow running
from the 1st section to the nth section with path length ln ¼ nDl, the dQ and dQw can be
approximated by
X
n  
dQ1!n ¼ 2pRout bw T ci  T wi Dl Dt, (6)
i¼1

and
dQ1!n
w ¼ qw Cw qðTwn  Tw0 ÞDt, (7)
where T ci=wi is the average temperature of concrete/water in the ith section, Dt is the time of
water flow running through each section, and q is the quantity of flow, which satisfies q ¼ 2pR2in v
and v ¼ Dl/Dt. For dQs, it should meet the following equation
ðð
dQs ¼ qs Cs As @Ts =@t dt dl, (8)

where @Ts/@t is the average temperature rise rate of the local wall of the steel pipe, which is
unknown. To simplify the problem, we assume that during a time history t, the value of T s could
^ : If the concrete is token off, the Ts could be cooled down swiftly and equal to T w :
be equal to T s
So the temperature rise of the steel pipe can be derived
 
@Ts =@t  T ^ s  T w þ dTs =t, (9)
^ means a pos-
where dTs  dTc is the temperature change of Ts during the time history t and T s
sible temperature of Ts. Because of the high thermal conductivity of steel, the T ^ might be
s
^
approximated by the maximum temperature of Tc along the pipe, yielding T s  max(Tc).
Consequently, the dQ1!n
s can be approximated by
X
n  
s n  qs Cs As =t
dQ1! maxðTc Þ  T wi þ DT ci Dl Dt, (10)
i¼1

where DT ci is the average temperature change of Tci during the time history t. Compared with
^  T wi , the effect of DT ci can be neglected. From equations (5)–(10), we have
T s
6 Y. HONG ET AL.

X
n      Xn  
2pRout T ci  T wi Dl ¼ qw Cw q T wn  Tw0 þ qs Cs As t maxðTc Þ  T wi Dl, (11)
i¼1 i¼1

Then, Twn can be obtained as

   
1!n 1!n 1!n
Twn ¼ Tw0 þ nc T c  T w  nv maxðTc Þ  T w , (12)

with
 2 
2Rout bw Dt Rout  R2in qc Cc Dt
c¼ 2 ,v ¼ , (13)
Rin qw Cw R2in qw Cw t
and
1  
1!n
Tc=w ¼ Tc=w0 þ 2Tc=w1 þ 2Tc=wn1 þ Tc=wn , (14)
2n
where qs is the density and Cs is the specific heat capacity of the steel pipe. Once Tc is solved, Tw
can be obtained by solving Eq. (12).

3. Numerical scheme
3.1. Time discretization
There are many time discretization approaches, such as the implicit-Euler time difference scheme
with accuracy level O, the Crank-Nicholson method with O2, and the fourth order explicit
Runge-Kutta method with O4. For the time marching, the implicit-Euler time difference scheme
has been used in this study as follows
@u usþDs  us
¼ , u ¼ usþDs : (15)
@s Ds

3.2. The RBF-FD method

In the localized RBF collocation method (RBF-FD), a weighted combination of a few solutions
nearby a point can be used to approximate the linear partial derivative at the point, written as
X
ns  
Luðxi Þ  Wik u xki , i ¼ 1, :::, N, (16)
k¼1

where L is a linear partial operator, xi is a collocation point, xki are ns points nearby xi, N is
total number of points distributing in the whole domain, and W ki are the weight coefficients
belonging to xki : According to the RBF collocation method, we have
Xns  
j
uðxi Þ  aj / kxi  xi k , (17)
j¼1

and
X
ns  
j
Luðxi Þ  aj L/ kxi  xi k , (18)
j¼1

j j
where /ðkxi  xi kÞ represents the RBF and L/ðkxi  xi kÞ is the differentiation form of the RBF.
Substituting Eq. (17) and Eq. (18) into Eq. (16), the following equation can be obtained
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 7

X
ns   Xns X
ns  
j j
aj L/ kxi  xi k  Wik  aj / kxki  xi k : (19)
j¼1 k¼1 j¼1

Because aj is a nonzero vector, we have

  Xns  
j j
L/ kxi  xi k  Wik / kxki  xi k : (20)
k¼1
jk j j j
With the notations /i ¼ /ðkxi  xki kÞ and L/i ¼ L/ðkxi  xi kÞ, the following equations in
matrix form can be established
0 10 1 0 1
/11    /1n s
Wi1 L/1i
B . i
.. C
i
B C B C
B . .. CB . C B . C
@ . . . A@ .. A ¼ @ .. A: (21)
ns 1 ns ns ns ns
/i    /i Wi L/i

Then, the weight coefficients can be solved. To make sure the equation hasna unique
o solution,
with different signed number i6¼j, xi and xi must be different from xj and xj :
k k

The following multiquadric (MQ) function is applied,

qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
/ðrij Þ ¼ rij2 þ c2i , (22)

where rij ¼ kxi  xj k2 is the distance between two collocation points xi and xj and ci is the shape
parameter. The multi-scale technique is used to determine ci, written as
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u 0 1
u1 X N
u
ci ¼ t @1  rij A: (23)
N j¼1

To approximate the large thermal gradient, a fictitious point method is applied on the boundary
of pipe Cp. A fictitious point Fi is placed along the n direction and near the collocation point xi.
Similar to Eq. (16) and Eq. (21), only xi and Fi are utilized to approximate Lu(xi) written as
Luðxi Þ  W 1 uðxi Þ þ W 2 uðF i Þ, xi 2 Cp , (24)
with W 1 and W 2 satisfying
 !
/ð0Þ
  / df W1 L/ð0Þ
  ,
¼ (25)
/ df /ð0Þ W2 L/ df

where df is the distance between xi and Fi. Then, the weight coefficients W 1 and W 2 can be
k
achieved. To approximate u(Fi), we can also use the weight coefficients W i written as
X
ns  
k
uðFi Þ  W i u xki : (26)
k¼1

According to Eq. (17), we have

X
ns  
j
uðFi Þ  aj / kF i  xi k : (27)
j¼1

Combining Eq. (17), Eq. (26), and Eq. (27), the following equations in matrix form can be
derived
8 Y. HONG ET AL.

0 10 1 0  1
/11  /1n s
W
1
L/ kF i  x 1
i k
B .i .. .. C
i
B i C B .. C
B . CB .. C ¼ B C: (28)
@ . . . A@ . A @  .  A
n
/ins 1  /ni s ns Wi s L/ kF i  xni s k
k
Then, the weight coefficients W i can be obtained by solving Eq. (28). Substituting Eq. (26) into
Eq. (24), the Lu(xi) can also be written as
X
ns  
Luðxi Þ  wki u xki , xi 2 Cp , (29)
k¼1

where wki can be expressed as

(
W 1 þ W 2, k ¼ 1,
wki ¼ k (30)
W 2W i , k ¼ 2, :::, ns :

3.3. Numerical formulation for pipe cooling problem

Using the time discretization scheme given by Eq. (15), the governing equation Eq. (1) and
boundary conditions Eq. (2) can be written as
@hðs þ DsÞ
Lg T ðx, s þ DsÞ ¼ T ðx, sÞ þ , x 2 X, (31)
@s
Le T ðx, s þ DsÞ ¼ be Te ðsÞ, x 2 Se , (32)
where x ¼ (x, y, z) is a point coordinates, Lg ¼ 1–Dsacr2 denotes the linear operator with respect
@
to the governing equation, Le ¼ K c @n þbe is the operator with respect to the boundary condition
exposed to corresponding environment.
Before applying the RBF-FD, we define that ik is the signed number of xki , A is a sparse matrix
defined as Aij NN with about Nns nonzero elements, and T is the solutions of all collocation
points fxi gN1 to be solved. Then, utilizing Eq. (16) to approximate LgT(x, s þ Ds) and LeT (x,
s þ Ds), Eq. (31) and Eq. (32) can be combined as
AT ¼ b, (33)

where all values of Aij are equal to zero except Aiik ¼ W ki , the weight coefficients W ki can be
obtained by solving Eq. (21) according to different partial operators, with the notation Ti ¼ T(xi,
s þ Ds), T can be expressed as [T1, , TN] T, and b can be obtained by known conditions corres-
pondingly. By solving Eq. (33), the unknown T can be obtained directly.
As mentioned before, however, it could be complicated to encrypt points around a tiny pipe,
let alone to change size and positions of many pipes. So the proposed self-correcting model must
be considered. Similar to Eq. (33), the equations in matrix form derived in the slice model (d)
can be written as
A0 T 0 ¼ b0 , (34)
where A0 is a sparse matrix defined as A0 ij N 0 N 0 with about N 0 n0 s nonzero elements
0
A0 iik ¼ W 0 ki : As for the points xi 2Cp, A0 iik ¼ w0 ki can be obtained from Eq. (30). Here, we do not
list everything in the slice model, since they are all similar to the concrete block model. Then, fol-
lowing the steps presented in the last section with different partial operators, the T can also
be solved.
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 9

Figure 3. Relative root mean square errors (RMSE) with N ¼ 1240 and N ¼ 4768 and numerical solutions by the SCM with
N ¼ 1240, for Example 1.

4. Examples and discussions

4.1. Example 1
In the first example, a hypothetical problem is tested to validate the numerical scheme. In this
problem, a cubic concrete is considered with a steel pipe running through its center from the top
side, where thickness of the pipe is neglected and water temperature is given by a known function
as

Tw ¼ Tin þ ð1  z=LÞðTout  Tin Þ, (35)

where Tin/Tout is temperature of water flow at the inlet/outlet position,

8
< 32 þ 80s,
> s<0:1,
Tin ¼ 30, Tout ¼ 40, 0:1  s < 0:8, (36)
>
:
30 þ 10e2ðs0:8Þ , s>0:8:

The length of one side of this concrete cubic is 0.6 m and the radius of this pipe is 0.04 m. The
top surface of the concrete cubic is subjected to the air and the other sides are subjected to the
formwork. The properties of concrete are provided as follows: Kc ¼ 3.2 W/(m C), Cc ¼ 963
J/(kg C), and qc ¼ 2187 kg/m3. The adiabatic temperature raise rate @h/@s ( C/d) is given by the
following piecewise function
8
s<0:1,
@h <
1200s,
¼ 120, 0:1  s < 0:2, (37)
@s :
120e3ðs0:2Þ , s>0:2,

The heat convection coefficients with respect to air, water and formwork are ba ¼ 5.62, bw ¼ 61,
and bf ¼ 4.4 W/(m2 C).
Figure 3 displays the comparison of the numerical solutions. From the left image of this figure,
it can be seen that the obtained RMSE is around 102 with N ¼ 1240 and more accurate results
are achieved when N is up to 4768. The right image of this figure exhibits the temperature vs.
time at two test points, T1(0.5,0.3,0.4) and T2(0.34,0.3,0.3), in detail. Quite consistence of the
numerical solutions with FEM and SCM can be observed, even at a point on the pipe wall (T2).
So, the accuracy of the SCM model can be demonstrated.
10 Y. HONG ET AL.

Figure 4. Temperature of the air Ta and temperature of water flow at the inlet Tin vs. time, for Example 2.

4.2. Example 2
A typical problem in reference [34] is solved in this subsection. The length of one side of this
concrete cubic is also 0.6 m. For this problem, the thickness of pipe is taken into account and the
temperature of water flow through whole pipe is calculated by using Eq. (14). The thermal prop-
erties of concrete, water, and steel are provided as follows: Kc ¼ 3.2 W/(m C), Cc ¼ 970 J/(kg C),
qc ¼ 2100 kg/m3, Kw ¼ 0.6 W/(m C), Cw ¼ 4200 J/(kg C), qw ¼ 1000 kg/m3, Ks ¼ 36 W/(m C),
Cs ¼ 470 J/(kg C), and qs ¼ 7900 kg/m3. The adiabatic temperature raise rate @h/@s ( C/d) can be
expressed by the following piecewise function
8
>
> 0, s<0:4,
>
>
>
> 1196ðs  0:4Þ, 0:4  s < 0:5,
>
>
>
<
@h 119:6, 0:5  s < 0:66,
¼ 4:3ðs0:66Þ
(38)
@s > > 119:6e , 0:66  s < 0:75,
>
>
>
> 77:8e3:5ðs0:75Þ , 0:75  s < 1:30,
>
>
>
: 11:7e2:6ðs1:30Þ , s  1:30:
The thickness of the pipe is 0.0054 m with radius Rin ¼ 0.0346 m and Rout ¼ 0.04 m. The velocity
of water flow is constant, v ¼ 5.45  104m/s, whose initial temperature Tin vs. time is provided
as shown in the right image of Figure 4. The running water begins at 0.625 day and continues
about 1.1 days. The left image of Figure 4 presents the air temperature Ta during the concrete
cooling period. The heat convection coefficients are ba ¼ 5.62, bw ¼ 86.5, and bf ¼ 4.4 W/(m2 C).
The solutions in four test points, located at the bottom Tb(0.34,0.3,0.1), center Tc(0.34,0.3,0.3),
top Tt(0.34,0.3,0.5), and side Ts(0.5,0.3,0.3) of the concrete box, are studied. By using the SCM,
the following results are obtained. Figure 5 shows the numerical solutions and the experiment
data [34]. From this figure, it can be seen that the approximation solution is consistent with the
experiment results. Meanwhile, Tout vs. time can be solved. As presented in Figure 6, the obtained
results are basically consistent with the experiment data. From the above results, the validity of
the proposed SCM solved by RBF can be demonstrated.

4.3. Example 3
To exhibit the ability of the present scheme, it is applied to 32 cases. In this example, the size of
the concrete box is the same as that in Example 2. Keeping the total volume of pipes/concrete
the same and remaining the total quantity of water flow q unchanged, this example is designed to
study the thermal effect of number and position of pipes in same size on this typical concrete
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 11

Figure 5. Numerical solutions of four test points obtained by the proposed RBF-FD-SCM compared with the experimental data,
for Example 2.

Figure 6. Numerical solutions of outlet temperature of water flow Tout, compared with the experiment data, for Example 2.

box. Except the number, size, and position of pipes, other conditions and parameters are assumed
to remain the same as those in Example 2 such as the thermal properties of concrete/water,
boundary conditions, and adiabatic temperature raise.
The following provides the strategy of pipe separation from 1 to n. As for 1 pipe case, the pipe
is in the same size as it used in Example 2, yielding R1in ¼ 0:0346, R1out ¼ 0:04, and DR1 ¼ 0.0045.
To make sure the total volume of pipes/concrete unchanged for n pipes case, we have

1 1
Rnin ¼ pffiffiffi R1in , Rnout ¼ pffiffiffi R1out , n ¼ 1, 2, :::, (39)
n n

as well as the thickness DRn ¼ p1ffiffin DR1 , where Rn means radius for n pipes case. To keep the total
quantity of water flow q the same, the velocity of water flow v must be the same as that in
Example 2.
12 Y. HONG ET AL.

Table 1. The maximum temperature max(T) and the maximum temperature difference max(DT) of 1 pipe located at different
positions (xp, yp), xp ¼ yp, for Example 3.
xp 0.1500 0.1875 0.2250 0.2625 0.3000
max(T) 64.1 63.5 62.6 61.6 60.4
max(DT) 22.9 21.0 20.0 19.3 18.8

At first, we take 1 pipe case as an example to study the pipe location effect on the thermal
field. Table 1 lists the maximum temperature max(T) and the maximum temperature difference
max(DT) with 1 pipe located at different positions (xp, yp), xp ¼ yp. From this table, it can be
observed that with the pipe getting more and more close to the center (0.3, 0.3), the max(T) and
max(DT) are gradually decreasing. When the pipe is put at the center, the lowest max(T) and
max(DT) are achieved. It is demonstrated that the pipe should not be put far away from the cen-
ter. Thus, we will not consider the cases that the pipes are put far away from the center.
Subsequently, the cases of more pipes are investigated.
As shown in Figure 7, all 32 cases from 1 pipe (P1) to 7 pipes (P7) located at different posi-
tions are studied to find the optimal one. Figure 8 presents the maximum temperature max(T)
and the maximum temperature difference max(DT) of concrete vs. number of pipes in all cases.
In this figure, we mark the minimum max(T) of each pipe case out by a line, whose configuration
of pipe can be found in Figure 7 as P1(a), P2(a), P3(a), P4(a), P5(c), P6(a), and P7(b). From the
line of max(T) (in the left image), it can be seen that when more pipes are applied, the max(T)
could be smaller than just one pipe. Using 4 to 6 pipes seems to obtain better results than others.
From the line of max(DT) (in the right image), it can be observed that the lowest max(DT) is
achieved by 4 pipes. From this figure, it could be discovered that 1 pipe is not the best choice
and it is not the more separated pipes the better.
To explain the above discovery, we at first take the whole concrete as a system and the average
temperature of concrete and water at the outlet, T c and T out , as the indicators. Figure 9 shows
T c and T out vs. time history. It is obviously seen that the more pipes result in the lower T c and
the higher T out : As it is determined in Eq. (39), we have that when 1 pipe is separated into more
pipes, the size of each pipe will be smaller, but the total touch area between pipe and water will
increase. Thus, more heat could be transferred from concrete to water flow. Fortunately, the
results as shown in Figure 9 are in line with what we expected. It indicates the fact that 1 pipe is
not the best choice to gain the lowest Tc as well as max(DT). Subsequently, the temperature of
water flow along a pipe should be investigated. As shown in Figure 10, it is apparently seen that
the more pipes are used, the higher Tw can be obtained. As mentioned before, the more pipes are
separated, the more heat could be transferred from concrete to water flow. Focusing on the Tw, it
is easy to found that the fastest increase of Tw arises at the inlet z ¼ 0.6, which also means the
highest heat flux from concrete to water arise at the inlet. At the outlet, however, Tw is high,
which may result in the lowest heat flux and a high temperature of concrete. So, the bigger differ-
ence of Tin and Tout must bring about bigger difference of heat flux at the inlet and the outlet,
which finally results in higher max(DT).
After comprehensive consideration of both max(T) and max(DT), it could be concluded that 4
pipes case P4(a) is the best choice for this problem.

4.4. Example 4
In the last example, it is suggested that small size of pipes may results in high temperature differ-
ence max(DT) due to the difference between Tin and Tout. In this example, the situation of con-
versing water flow is considered, in order to further decrease max(DT) for case P4(a). Figure 11
provides two kinds of initial water flow direction a and b. Figure12 presents the max(T) and the
max(DT) obtained by different initial direction of water flow vs. frequency of conversing water
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 13

Figure 7. Vertical view of 32 cases from 1 pipe (P1) to 7 pipes (P7) located at different positions, for Example 3.

Figure 8. The maximum temperature max(T) and the maximum temperature difference max(DT) of concrete vs. number of pipes
in all cases, for Example 3.

Figure 9. The average temperature of concrete T c and water at the outlet T out vs. time with different number of pipes, for
Example 3.

direction per day, where “same direction” means the initial water direction of every pipe is all the
same as the x circle. From Figure 12, it can be found that the max(T) is almost remain
unchanged, no matter the initial water direction or the frequency of changing direction is differ-
ent. What makes difference is that the max(DT) obviously decreases with increasing frequency. If
we remain the direction unchanged, the lowest max(DT) could be achieved by applying initial
14 Y. HONG ET AL.

Figure 10. Temperature of water flow Tw along a pipe z when maximum Tout arises, for Example 3.

Figure 11. Vertical view of 4 pipes with different initial water flow direction a and b, where the point circle means outlet and
the x circle means inlet, for Example 4.

Figure 12. The max(T) and max(DT) obtained by different direction of water flow vs. frequency of changing direction per day,
for Example 4.

direction a. When the frequency increases to 25 times per day, the initial direction seems to have
little effect on the max(DT). It is surprised to find that max(DT) can be lower than 14, which is
the value obtained when no pipe is used. It suggests that a suitable number of separated pipes
with right water direction and appropriate conversing frequency can not only decrease the
max(T), but also sufficiently control the max(DT) in a low level, which is helpful for decreasing
 NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER, PART A: APPLICATIONS 15

the risk probability of thermal cracks. Consequently, the correctness of the proposed scheme and
the importance of numerical simulation on the pipe cooling problem can be demonstrated.

5. Remarks and conclusions

In this study, a self-correcting model (SCM) is provided to overcome three dimensional large
scale-radio problems in pipe cooling concrete by using the RBF based method. To approximate
the temperature of water flow along the pipe, a thermal equilibrium equation is derived. The
accuracy of the proposed scheme is derived from a paradigmatic example with a cooling pipe.
The numerical solutions are in good consistence with those obtained by the FEM and the experi-
ment data. To further present the ability of the RBF-FD-SCM, it is utilized to optimization of
cooling pipe system under certain constrains: (1) the cooling pipes occupy fixed volume of con-
crete; (2) the total quantity of water flow remains unchanged; (3) The initial temperature of water
is the same. During the optimization process, the pipes with changing size, number, and positions
are all considered, which confirms the effectiveness of our method. Moreover, thermal effect of
conversing water flow is investigated to further control the maximum temperature difference.
Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can be sufficiently accurate and reliable
in solving the pipe cooling problem. It is also suggested the importance of numerical simulation
on the pipe cooling problem that can provide a good design of pipe cooling system, which
achieves minimum max(T) and max(DT) to reduce the risk of thermal cracks. Although just a
typical pipe cooling problem is tested in this study, it gives us more confidence to solve the real
problems in engineering. To study the cases with different materials and types of pipes, as well as
to find the optimal velocity of water considering the water resources and energy consuming, is
our future’s work.

Funding
The work in this article is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U1765204), the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2019B65214, B20020212), the Natural Science
Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20190073), the Shenzhen Science and Technology Plan Project
(JSGG201805071830208), the Graduate Research and Innovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (No. SJKY19-0421),
the State Key Laboratory of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. SKLA202001), the China Postdoctoral
Science Foundation (No. 2017M611669, 2018T110430), and the China Scholarship Council (CSC) (Grant No.
201906710174).

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