The 3-Zone Pipe is part of Simscape Fluids, and the 2-Zone Pipe is part of the Simscape foundation library. The way to think about this is that the 3-Zone Pipe is a specialized component designed for a specific purpose, and the 2-Zone Pipe is designed for all other purposes.
The purpose of the 3-Zone Pipe can be summarized by the following sentence found in the Description section of the 3-Zone Pipe's documentation page:
"Use this block to efficiently capture, without resorting to chains of Pipe (2P) blocks, the dynamics of phase change along a pipe."
Run the following command to get the example documentation in MATLAB R2018b:
web(fullfile(docroot, "physmod/hydro/ref/3zonepipe2p.html#d120e8940"))
Unless you need the specific features designed for capturing the dynamics of phase change along a pipe, you do not need the 3-Zone Pipe. For example, do you need to know the length fractions of the liquid, vapor, and mixed-phase zones in the pipe? This can be observed via the output port Z of the 3-Zone Pipe. In contrast, the 2-Zone Pipe does not offer this information.
For more information, you can explore the following Simscape examples.
Run the following command to get the example documentation in MATLAB R2018b.
Example using the 2-Zone Pipe:
web(fullfile(docroot, "physmod/simscape/examples/two-phase-fluid-refrigeration.html"))
Example using the 3-Zone Pipe:
Run the following command to get the example documentation in MATLAB R2018b.
web(fullfile(docroot, 'physmod/hydro/examples/pipe-fluid-vaporization-and-condensation.html'))
Please follow the below link to search for the required information regarding the current release:
