Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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 with OLGA using FEMTherm, but this discussion will center on the use of the
standard OLGA model.
The equation for heat transfer in a buried pipeline is:
hsoil
k soil
D
2H
cosh 1
2
D
(1)
1
cosh 1 ( x) ln x x 2 1 2 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:
hsoil
k soil
D D2
ln
2 D
(3)
2H 2 2
2
H
D2 D
1
D D
(4)
This expression gives the following values for D2/D as a function of H/D:
H/D
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
D2/D
3.73
5.83
7.87
9.90
11.92
15.94
19.95
23.96
The equivalent thickness of the soil layer for use in the concentric layer calculation would
be:
tequiv 0.5( D2 D)
(5)
BD H 0.5D
(6)
tequiv/BD
2.73
2.42
2.29
2.23
2.18
2.13
2.11
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.