The Resistive Tubular Heater - Mathematical and Simulation Model

Abstract

It is essential to achieve the mathematical model and the simulation when designing complex installations. This allows the analysis of different operating modes and the behavior of the existing system. It enables notification of possible errors and their correction, avoiding additional costs involved for achieving and testing facility in real condi-tions. Some operating modes could be degraded modes. This would be very difficult to replicate or would give rise to a faulty installation. In order to model and simulate a com-plex installation it is, however, need that the components are modeled correctly and to be interpreted correctly the inter-actions between them and the dependency of the parameters on the operating conditions. Because many complex systems incorporate electrical heating tube elements, this paper pro-poses an original mathematical model for a resistive tubular heater. Based on this model it was developed a Matlab-Simulink simulation model. The model has been designed so that it can be easily adapted to various situations, where the heating elements in tube are immersed in liquids or embed-ded in solid materials. The proposed model allows a fast simulation and evaluation of the function of the resistive tubular heater in transient regime or under steady state regime. One challenge was to minimize the parameters which need to be pre-calculated based on physical and con-structive data, in order to enroll them in the prescription blocks of the model. The viability of the presented modeling system was verified both by comparison with a real heating element and by drawing the temperature curves. These curves highlight the fitting in the admitted temperature domain for such an element. images