[arnaud6]

Hello all,

I would like an advice to execute a mesh operation on openfoam. I am working only with fluid regions and want to execute simpleFoam solver.

I have got a mesher which can directly export to openfoam .

But instead of exporting only one mesh with the different regions stored into the "cellZones" file (which is what I want), it exports one mesh for each region, and without creating a "cellZones" file

So, do you know a quick workaround to perform this operation ?
What can work I think is
*Add a minor mesh to the master mesh using mergeMeshes
*Use a topoSetDict file to write the different cellZones
What do you think about it ?

It may work but it will be very painful and time consuming as I have more than 15 regions to merge !! Is there a quicker way ?

In fact if I think about it, what I want to do is the exact inverse operation of splitMeshRegions ! Or maybe I should use chtMultiRegionSimpleFoam ? I have never used it ... Is it as fast as using the simpleFoam solver?

[wyldckat]

Hi Arnaud6,

I see that this issue is somewhat related to this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...-boundary.html

Let me start in reverse order:

1. chtMultiRegionSimpleFoam was designed for Conjugate Heat Transfer and therefore is mainly meant for heat transfer between non-mixing regions, i.e. heat exchanges between solids and fluids.
2. The way I see it, if the mesh regions are 100% perfectly compatible meshes, i.e. they can be easily be stitched together without having to cut cells, then you could perhaps simply merge the meshes and then use cyclic patches to connect the patches between each ex-region.
3. With so many regions, scripting is likely the way to go with this. I know I made a post somewhere about how to delete unwanted regions... which should help a bit with this... ah, OK, the way to find it:
   • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Sn...-region_meshes
     • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post341623
   Mmm... then again... perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for?
4. Why does your original mesh have multiple regions? Why not simply merge them before exporting to the file that is later converted to OpenFOAM?

Best regards,
Bruno

[arnaud6]

Hi Wyldckat

Thanks for being everywhere on the forum and giving great advice !

So, from what you are saying, I will stick to using mergeMeshes to build a master mesh then running simpleFoam. In fact I have just seen that I can run

mergeMeshes <masterCase> <addCase> -addRegion region1 -addRegion region 2 ....

And specifying all the regions to merge in one command. So that I need to run the utility only once !

And after, as I need the cellZones to apply on them different treatment on the fvOptions file (I need an MRF cellZone), I will use the setSet I think.
Do you know if from an inside point of a region, I can select select all the cells of the region ? That would do the trick !

For your last question, unfortunately, I have almost no control on the mesher . And it is only exporting the multi region to multiple meshes instead of exporting only one mesh with multiple cellZones !

I will try with the scripting and let you know !

[wyldckat]

Originally Posted by arnaud6

Do you know if from an inside point of a region, I can select select all the cells of the region ? That would do the trick !

I'm not sure it will work as you want it to work, but you can use setSet to create a new empty cellSet and then invert that set, which will select all cells (invert "nothing" to "everything" ). Then you can convert that set to a zone (cellSet -> cellSetZone), all from using:

setSet -region region_name

so... you'll need at least for the zones with MRF.

Problem is that when the merging process is used, I don't know if the cellSetZone will be translated accordingly, or not, to the new cell ID in the new merged mesh.

[arnaud6]

Well it's strange, I have made some tests with mergeMeshes and openfoam complained about an imaginary missing boundary.

Sorry Wyldckat, I have abandonned this way of working for the moment and I am concentrating on playing in a different way.

I ll let you know when I come back to this issue.

[KateEisenhower]

Originally Posted by wyldckat

I'm not sure it will work as you want it to work, but you can use setSet to create a new empty cellSet and then invert that set, which will select all cells (invert "nothing" to "everything" ). Then you can convert that set to a zone (cellSet -> cellSetZone), all from using:

setSet -region region_name

so... you'll need at least for the zones with MRF.

Problem is that when the merging process is used, I don't know if the cellSetZone will be translated accordingly, or not, to the new cell ID in the new merged mesh.

Hello Bruno,

how do you invert a set in OpenFoam?

Thanks for your help,

Kate

[KateEisenhower]

Hello,

I got the answer from the openfoamwiki:

setSet
Command>cellSet younameit invert
Command>quit

Thanks anyway,

Kate