Copying Internal Patches to Multiple Inlets
 

Hi all,

I was hoping someone would be able to steer me in the right direction regarding how to go about copying the field values of an internal patch onto multiple inlet patches (or if it's even possible). I am attempting to model fluid flow in a tube-cooled packed bed reactor in which the packed section is nine-fold radially symmetric but the top section is not.

I am using chtMultiRegionSimpleFoam to model the heat transfer through the tubes between the shell and tube fluids and to save on the meshing memory demands I am simply using a 40° wedge for the packed section, as can be seen in the attached cutaway.

http://imgur.com/a/Lux13

I plan on using a cyclicAMI boundary condition for the sides of the wedge but I am unsure what to do about the tube inlet holes you can see in the picture. I'd like to match the field values of the three tubes at the reactor top/reactor bed interface but I lack the experience necessary to know how best to go about doing that or how to manage internal patches, especially in a multi-region case.

I have done some research into AMI boundary conditions but as far as I can tell it does 1-to-1 mapping, i.e. between a two neighbouring patches. Is it possible to use one source AMI patch and copy it to multiple 'neighbours'?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, let me know if more information is required. By the way if it wasn't obvious I plan on meshing with snappyHexMesh and have two regions, fluid and solid (all solid parts are connected and not really visible in the picture).

Regards,

Michael