Thermal Analysis Help

[teoman]

Is anybody proficient with CFD analysis?

I have an interesting project (for me atleast), where I would like to do some thermal analysis, more notably the thermal eqilibrium point of a 100x100x2500mm tower of water which is heated with 100W of energy from a point 1000mm up from its base.

Anyone has the software set up? Is it a difficult / very time consuming task to calculate / setup?


More on the project: 100W LED's have gone down in price to about 5-10 usd. I would like to make a lighting setup for my living room, however currently they require heatsinks and fans which are noisy. So what i had in mind was getting some aluminium box profile tube, stand it up straight and fill it with water hoping that the aluminium will transfer the heat quickly to the water which will move upwards. Resulting in a massive heat-sink that does not need active cooling. I am wondering if this would suffice to cool the LED. Or what size would 200x200mm profile? or 300x100....


I think that i can download all of autocad's software for free ( academic free-bee).

Any help will be welcome.

A hobby grade analysis will suffice, heck even a more calibrated engineers guesstimation will be ok.


My primitive analysis suggests that in the tower there will be 25L of water, and with 100W of energy (assuming the water absorbs all of it uniformly) the temperature will rise by 3.4 degrees C in 1 hour. But is the water fast enough? What would be the interface temperature at the LED.

But what would happen if the tower only contained 5L of water. The temp would raise 17 degrees C in one hour which it may not be able to shed away.





Thanks in advance.