Design optimization of water-cooled thermocouple probe

The object of this bachelor’s thesis is to create a computational model of an existing (basic) structure water-cooled thermocouple probe, to calculate and evaluate the quality of existing cooling probe and to propose possible design modifications to improve the cooling effect of the probe tip. Verify and evaluate design modifications by further calculation. The calculation will be carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD method). On the contrary, the aim of this work is not to create another text tool for students dealing with CFD topics. The first part describes the meaning and history of the CFD methods, then mentions the work on the principle of thermocouple probes and its application in practice. The second part of the work is devoted to problem solving. It describes the reason for the introduction of model situations when calculating the cooling effect of thermocouple probes and calculation indicates what type of flow occurs inside the thermocouple probe. It further describes the results of calculations for several approximations gradually increasing accuracy of the resulting solution of the problem and assessing the quality of cooling in the probe tip current (basic) structure. The final part deals with design changes for better cooling effect especially in the probe tip, which is verified by further calculation as well