[dolfus]

Hello all,

I'm trying to develop my own solver based in interFoam but I'm stucked at the interfaceProperties.C file. I think that I understand almost the whole file but after the calculation of the normal interface vector nHatp, the alpha gradient is corrected as

acap.gradient()=(nf&nHatp)*mag(gradlAlphaf[patchi])

i.e. the magnitud of the gradient multiplied by the cosine of the angle of the interface at the wall.

First af all I set the limit entry in the alpha.water dictionary to none and If I modify this last gradient correction expression, for example setting it up to 0, it is interpreted by the code as if the dot product (nf&nHatp) were equal to 0, i.e. the angle is 90º, wich is consistent. But if I simply remove this line from the code, the effect in the calculations is the same as in the last case: the gradient of alpha is equal to 0. So I haven't been able to override this correction step to get just the gradient of alpha calculated (notice that if you just let acap.gradient()=mag(gradlAlphaf[patchi]) it would mean that (nf&nHatp)=1 and therofore the angle would be 0º).

With the aim to avoid this, I tried to modify the following constructor in the alphaContactAnglePatchScalarField.C file

Foam::alphaContactAngleFvPatchScalarField::alphaContactAngleFvPatchScalarField
(
    const fvPatch& p,
    const DimensionedField<scalar, volMesh>& iF,
    const dictionary& dict
)
:
    fixedGradientFvPatchScalarField(p, iF),
    limit_(limitControlNames_.read(dict.lookup("limit")))
{
    if (dict.found("gradient"))
    {
        gradient() = scalarField("gradient", dict, p.size());
        fixedGradientFvPatchScalarField::updateCoeffs();
        fixedGradientFvPatchScalarField::evaluate();
    }
    else
    {
        fvPatchField<scalar>::operator=(patchInternalField());
        gradient() = 0.0;
    }
 }

but when removing the else entry the alpha gradient equals to 0 again (if you modify this entry setting it up to 10 por example, it works).
So I haven't been able to understand how this implementation of the alpha gradient works. I hope you can shed light on this matter.


Regards.

[zhaohb11_cfd]

Hi dolfus，

Do you have any ideas on what is the alpha gradient for ? I am also puzzled by this code.