FLOWER

Overview

FLOWER simulates the transient and steady state response of a cryogenic system, modelling it as an assembly of active and passive components forming an hydraulic network. In general the FLOWER network is composed of:
  • interconnected junctions where the flow can be steady state or transient. Junctions can be of different type, passive (e.g. a pipe or a valve) or active (e.g. a pump or a turbine);
  • volume nodes with perfect mixing of helium and zero flow, representing buffers and manifolds.
A simplified view of an hydraulic network as analysed by FLOWER is given here

[hydraulic network]

The model of the hydraulic circuit is obtained by an arbitrary assembly of the following components:
  • manifolds and buffers. These are the connection points for an arbitrary number of pipes (inlet and outlet). Their volume can range from a negligible value (interconnection point) to large value (physical buffers).

  • 1-D flow pipes. The pipes models range from the incompressible, frictional, steady-state, lumped constants flow model to compressible, frictional or frictionless, non-stationary, heated pipe model discretized by FE;

  • heat exchanger. A heat exhanger is modelled linking thermally pipes among themselves, or pipes to volumes (e.g. simulating a large heat sink). The parameters of the heat exchanger are controlled by the user;

  • control and check valves. The user can control valve opening, head loss through the valve and threshold settings;

  • burst disks. The burst pressure can be defined by the user;

  • ideal volumetric pumps and compressors. The pumps and compressors are assumed to be isentropic (ideal behaviour) and they deliver either a constant flow (volumetric pump) or a massflow dependent pressure head (compressor);

  • ideal turbines. The turbine is also assumed to be isentropic (ideal behaviour) and they have a pressure drop that depends on the flow, similar to a valve;

  • external flow paths such as a cable length analysed by Thea. This interface component allows passing hydraulic boundary conditions for the cable analysis through inlet and outlet manifolds. In turn the cable analysis returns inlet and outlet massflows into these manifolds, used by FLOWER for the simulation of the network. NOTE: this feature is available through the code manager SUPERMAGNET
The user has in addition control on most relevant properties of the components, which can contain non-linearities (e.g. friction factor, heat transfer) and space and time variable source terms (e.g. heating, heat exchanger temperature).

Version

December 2016, version 4.5

Installations

  • Mac OSX (native development platform)

  • Linux (e.g. RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu, and other distributions)

  • UNIX (e.g. AIX on RISC-6000, Solaris on Sun-Spark, DEC Alpha, HP UX, and other)

  • CYGWIN (port available to run under Windows, not supported)

On-line documentation

Download the manual in Pdf format for the latest version of FLOWER

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