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Space Engineers >  Workshop > Kinesi's Workshop > Thermal Mechanics (Functional* No longer maintained) > Discussions
Thermal Mechanics (Functional* No longer maintained)
Description Discussions4 Comments182 Change Notes
Infinity 29 Aug, 2022 @ 3:09pm
Proposal for extra mechanics and blocks
Efficiency for each blocks:
Linear efficiency is fine, constant efficiency would be alright for reactors as in reality nuclear reactors can’t be tuned for power (either too much neutrons or not enough, you can ramp the turbines to tune the electric generation). Non-linearities would be really cool, sort of like a overload and ditch situation.
Maybe higher tech stuff have higher efficiency, superconductors should produce no heat, reactor gets 30 - 40% efficiency, combustion gets 25 - 30%.

Phase change and PV=NTK:
Latent heat for phase changes before things starting to blow up would be cool to see. Pressure build up and changes would be nice, even with just ideal gas law for the ship atmosphere. Volume can be calculated from the empty block space enclosed by a pressurized environment.
Also cool if sun direction is taken into consideration (places without atmosphere can get something like a 200 degrees difference between day and night).
Temperature flow in pressurized environment, its much faster for temperature to even out in places with fluids.
Quick coolant venting option for the system will be nice: basically Carnot cycle but backwards, pressurized coolant -> cool the machine -> vent coolant to directly dump the heat, as opposed to pressurize -> radiate -> cool & expand -> pressurized. Sort of an expensive way to cool systems fast with materials.
Maybe a pressure pump as an upgrade to gas tank systems, pack more gas in after cooled

Heat flow hierarchy and multiple cores:
At this point I should propose a heat sink and heat signature system, maybe effecting the targeting accuracy and give off an antenna signal with respective distances following the inverse square law intensity falloff.
It’d be also cool to have to use conveyors to pump the coolants, maybe a block to put next to things, which can be conveyored up, sort of connecting up everything for it to be calculated in the same core temperature system, else it gets its own core temperature and gets blown up unnoticed. The stuff in pressure should raise the atmospheric temperature on a ship to eventually kill the engineer, unless it’s having its heat pumped away. So really 2 or more core temperatures: how ever many for each disconnect atmospheres in the ship if there’s any, vent to 0 if decompression happens, one for the heat sink heat exchanger or radiator systems, then how ever many for things that didn’t get connected. Heat flow favours the heat sink / radiator core temperature when connected, then atmospheric, with maybe a percentage of temperature leaks from radiator core to atmosphere in ship.
Last edited by Infinity; 29 Aug, 2022 @ 6:23pm
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
Fenrir 30 Aug, 2022 @ 3:49pm 
Personally, I like the Phase change block idea for reactors, but I think I can add to that by saying that there be an option to consume ice to help with the phase change (add realism) for one, and a slider (or option for buttons when in seat) to increase or decrease flow rate of heat exchange, in exchange, it would increase / decrease ice consumption. This wold also go with what you said about conveyors and pipes.
#1
Infinity 31 Aug, 2022 @ 5:24pm 
The problem with phase changing coolants if I remembered correctly is: ideally it doesn’t happen. Ideally everything is kept at critical points, this is why a fusion reactor design was proposed to use liquid state aluminum for coolant, since people don’t want the stuff to explode. Phase change is also a non-linear process which means it’s computationally difficult to implement. Coolant consumption should only happen when it’s vented (either from damage or an open cycle).

Maybe instead of the slider changing ice consumption it would change flow speed, slower flow speed means more heat removed for less power from the pumps, but higher risk of water vaporizing into steam and bowing up.

Edit: adding to that: different coolants maybe even things like aluminum ingots can be used, say the guy want to cool a reactor at over 1000degrees, if they send in water the cooling system will immediately blow up, but if they send in aluminum first, then wait until temperature drops for a bit, send in something else that doesn’t vaporize at the temperature but still pushes out the aluminum, they may survive. Maybe when temperature is too low, the coolant freezes inside the pipe, and if the coolant happens to be water then the pipe pops because water expands into ice. If it’s aluminum, the pipe becomes permanently unusable because it’s welded shut with solid aluminum, in which case they need to replace it or risk their stuff overheating.

Edit: I forgot about gravity for a moment. Under gravity, you get to evaporate things to cool other things. There’s something called thermal syphon, it basically uses the fact that water after changing phase to gas becomes less dense, let’s the stuff evaporate cool (using a fan) and recollect in a closed cycle. Only works when right side up though.
Last edited by Infinity; 31 Aug, 2022 @ 7:55pm
#2
DlriumTrgger 7 Sep, 2022 @ 8:28am 
just a suggestion, from reading everyone's power consumption about the cooling systems, why not have heat generation scale down with the bigger power outputs? maybe make 20MW (just a random number) for LG as a hard cap and from that upward scale the heat produced, so for every next MW it makes less heat. Just for the sake of gameplay.
#3
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