CFD for porous medium heat transfer
 

Dear all,
I am starting a project in which I will study the effect of porous medium geometrical features (cell structure, porosity, surface area of one porous cell, etc.) on heat transfer due to air flow through the medium. I have used CFD in my masters thesis but it was 6 years ago and since then I have had nothing to do with CFD so Iam not up-to-date with latest trends. I do not want to do a wrong start which will cause troubles down the road. At least I want to start with the right tools. I have used Solidworks for geometry creation, gambit for mesh, Fluent for CFD runs and tecplot for post processing. However, I am not sure whether or not they are still good options... Thus I would really like to get your advices regarding what tool to use. Please help me to find answers for the following questions.

1- What CAD tool I should use? For some certain geometries, I will literally draw the geometry (not just defining porosity in Fluent) e.g. I will draw kelvin cell structure or tiny steel balls to create a porous domain. I know how to use Solidworks and I like it: it is simple and fast but I am open to any other advices you may have.

2- What mesh toolI should use? I have only used Gambit in my life and I know it is very old. I want to use a newer and more robust one. Please advise and please consider my purpose: I will need to do lots of unstructured mesh for hundreds of boundary layers inside the porous medium.

3- What CFD tool I should use? I would like to use something as fast as possible :) because I will do hundreds of different runs. Most of the runs I will do will be steady state. I will be dealing with solving boundary layers, implementing conjugate models and I will also utilize the available porosity features of the tool.

4- What post-processing tool I should use? I will need to post-process boundary layers, visualize them, create 3D plots, lots of surface heat flux integrals, heat transfer coefficients through the wall....

Any other advice you may have would be appreciated.

I will keep this thread updated and I will fill this with my own learnings through my study.

Thank all of you a ton for all of your help !

By the way, I am an old aggie and appreciate advices from aggies ;)

Regards

Any advices ? Thx

No one has any idea ? [emoji19]

I doubt the type of CAD tool matters, I regularly use Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor, built-in CAD tools for specific CFD packages, etc. I would recommend using the one you're most comfortable with and exporting the CAD in a "neutral" format. Neutral formats such as parasolid, STEP, IGES, etc, that way you do not run into "License issues" when using commercial solvers.

It really depends on what you're comfortable with/how much effort you want to putting into the meshes. Also, do you have access to products that require a license (commercial solvers) such as ANSYS, STAR-CCM+, etc.

It's a really loaded question and requires you to determine which tool is appropriate for your flows. Likely most commercial solvers will be able to simulate the flows you're wanting to investigate (with the limited information provided). Also, free solvers such as OpenFOAM, Nek5000, PyFR, SU2, etc will be likely able to do what you're wanting to simulate.

Paraview, VISIT, built-in ones should work. They all are able the same unless you want to make really interesting videos (which paraview and VISIT will be more useful).

Gig 'em.

Icarasik, thank you a ton for your reply. I think I now have answers for my questions but it seems I will need some preliminary study to decide question #3 but like you said most of the commercial ones should be ok.

Thanks and Gig'em.

Non-equilibrium thermal model for porous medium
 

Dear all,

I am modelling heat transfer in porous medium (from hot air to porous medium) in Fluent. I have defined non-equilibrium thermal model in 'porous zone' in cell zone conditions (type: fluid). Fluent have created co-incident (shadow) solid zone adjacent to the fluid zone. and for that solid zone i have defined fixed temperature (fixed value).
Other settings for porous medium like resistance coeffecients have been defined as usual.
But
I am not sure is this all we need to do to define non-equillibrium thermal model??
in result analysis I have to check solid temperature at different points along the height of column. But i dont know how to get this display? currently i have created some points by point creation in my geometry but i think it displays fluid or solid-fluid mean temperature, not the solid temperature that i need.

Please help me on these problems.

Thank you very much.
Regards