Selecting the Right Heat Transfer Interface
The Heat Transfer branch included with the Subsurface Flow Module license includes a number of subbranches to describe energy transport.
Heat transfer through conduction and convection (both nonisothermal flow and conjugate heat transfer) in solid and free media is supported by physics interfaces shipped with the basic COMSOL Multiphysics license.
If you are using this module with enhanced Heat Transfer interface features, see also the Heat Transfer Module documentation for additional information. See Where Do I Access the Documentation and Application Libraries?
This module also includes The Heat Transfer in Porous Media Interface. The physics interface itself supports heat transfer in porous media where the thermal conductivity and heat capacity are affected by the extent of porosity. As a porous media is made up of a solid matrix filled with a fluid, heat is transported at different rates through the two types of media. The Heat Transfer in Porous Media interface provides tools and support for defining an appropriate matrix model.
The Heat Transfer in Porous Media interface characterizes temperature distributions for geological phenomena and freely couple to other features in a model. The physics interface applies to systems consisting of porous media, solids, and fluids. Included are physics interfaces to calculate effective properties for porous media consisting of fluids and solid components, or a rock formation with different mineral proportions. The physics interface also features predefined expressions to represent the geotherm as a radiogenic heat source.
The Heat Transfer in Fractures (htlsh) interface (), found in the Thin Structures physics area under the Heat Transfer branch (), is used to model heat transfer by conduction and convection in layered materials represented by boundaries. The interface is active on all boundaries where a layered material is defined, with a Porous Medium model active by default. All functionalities for including other boundary contributions, such as surface-to-ambient radiation, are also available.