Modelling adjacent fluid and solid regions
 

Hi there,

I'm trying to model heat transfer through a hollow-core concrete slab. My model consists of a rectangular face with 6 circular faces at equal spacing within it. This represents the concrete with the circular air voids within it. I have subtracted the faces so that I only have the circular faces and the rectangular face with the circles missing from it.

Below and above the concrete are two channels representing the top 15cm of a room and the service floor above the floor construction.

When i run my simulation the heat from the ceiling space is transferred into the concrete, but the temperature of the fluid regions within the concrete (the voids) does not change, even if I use a ridiculously high inlet temperature such as 500K.

I think the problem is that even though I named the edges of the voids in gambit, when I export to fluent the boundaries between the concrete and the voids are not "coupled" as they should be. Is there a way of forcing fluent to create coupld boundaries? I tried using the interface definition but then I couldn't initialise the solution in fluent.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!