Rotating blade in circular/square vessel (Salome+OpenFoam)
 

Hello everybody,

this is my very first comment on the forum which I have used many times until now to learn the rudiments of Openfoam.
However, I finally came to a point where tutorials are not enough any more and I must ask to somebody that's really expert to proceed in what I'm trying to do.

What I would like to study: A rotating blade in a vessel
Using: Salome for the meshing and Openfoam for the solution.

I create the mesh in salome using a cylinder and a small square (to simulate the blade). I usually try two solutions:

1)
I subtract the blade from the cylinder (creating an hollow frame) and mesh, identifying the surfaces as rotor/stator. Then move to the icoFoam and try with the rotatingWall condition.

2)
I create a compound from the blade and the cylinder and mesh as before. Again I move to openFoam and try like before.

The problem is that in each case, what I obtain is that INSIDE the blade the fluid indeed rotates (wether if it is hollow or solid), but in the bulk of the vessel there's no movement at all. It seems I cannot understand how to tell Salome or openFoam which part is the vessel wall, which is the volume containing the fluid and which is the stirring blade.

In an effort to solve this point I've been trying to adapt to Salome the instructions I found here (Gambit+foam) but I didn't managed a way out as the meshing softwares seem so different. Of course I don't have to say I don't have the money to afford Fluent....

Up to now I've searched a lot of pages and tried a lot of solutions posted in this forum for doing what I want but i'm not able to get to an adequate result. Is there anybody who can shed some light on how to make this two sofwares work together for rotating impellers??

Thank you so much in advance.

Luca