Abstract
In this study, the numerical analysis and experiments of the hot water storage using the thermal stratification techniques were carried out. The CPU time for a typical run of the the thermal stratification up to 900 seconds took one week for a $81{\times}31$ mesh size and 10 days for a $118{\times}31$ mesh size, respectively, for a cylindrical shape of the storage. In the initial stage, the numerical results were in favorable agreement with the experimental results, but it showed that the temperature gradients in the storage decreased gradually with time. It was also found that the increase of ${\delta}t$ decreased the convergent speed due to the intensive fluctuation of the velocity field in every iteration. The increase of numbers of grids is projected to forecast a more accurate result, but it made the computing time longer and woul slow down convergence. At the experiments of the flow visualization, it was confirmed that the thermal stratification was apparently built up due to the installation of diffuser at the lower part of the storage. Thus, the thermal performance of the storage could be improved by installing the diffusers at the inlet and outlet.
