SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional Thermal Solver Not Just For Commercial Use Anymore!

Recently I decided to put Simulation to the test in a real world application.  Baby bottles.

The problem statement is as follows:

My 9 month old son has a regiment of four 8 oz bottles of milk every 24 hours.

To prepare the milk for feeding the following process takes place.

• The milk is removed from the refrigerator where it was chilled in the glass bottle to 40 Degrees F.
• The bottle is placed in a ceramic vessel which is room temp 68 degrees F.
• Boiling water 212 degrees F is poured over the bottle into the container covering the level of the milk.

At 1:00 in the morning it seems to take forever to get the bottle to heat up to a temperature of about 68 to 70 degrees F.  Waiting for the milk to warm up  is a frustrating task when your child is crying, and you are tired.  This leads to checking the bottle every 30 seconds, which delays the overall warming of the bottle.

Using Simulation Professional and a transient heat analysis I determined the minimum time to warm the bottle to the desired temperature was 6 minutes.  SOLIDWORKS standard materials were used for the thermal conductivity specifications.  Water’s material properties  was used as an approximation for the milk.

The Average Temperature of the milk is below.  This would be the same as shaking the bottle to evenly distribute the temperature.

With this information at hand a real life test was completed, mid day on a weekend(less stress).  Real world time was 5 minutes 38 seconds according to the stop watch and digital kitchen thermometer.

Now my wife and I can simply watch the clock for six minutes while consoling our son, instead of hurriedly trying to test the temperature of the bottle.  Thanks to SOLIDWORKS Simulation we get our baby back to sleep faster and more efficiently.