[rbobo42]

I have a project which involves analyzing the temperature gradient in conical pipes into which warm air is pumped. I've got the mesh set up and can run the case successfully but the data is rather nonsensical at the moment. It seems like a fairly straightforward case so it'd be great if someone could help point me in the right direction as far as solvers, constants and boundary conditions go.

(At this point it may be worth mentioning that my background is in music, not physics, engineering, or computer science. I'm willing to learn, but please forgive any naivete or obvious oversights on my part.)

Since this is a cone, I'm using a axisymmetric mesh with 5 patches: two for the wedge planes, the pipe wall, the inlet, and the outlet. Temperature is the only thing I need to know. The ambient and starting temperature of the system is 294K. At t=0 warm air (308K) is pumped into the inlet and I want to analyze the temperature at a given distance into the pipe at a given time.

1) What is the best solver to use? I've been using rhoPimpleFoam.

2) What constants do I need to be present? Right now I have alphat, epsilon, k, mut, p, T, and U. (Being completely honest, I copied over and edited whatever constants I needed form a tutorial case until the thing actually ran. I'm gradually working on understanding what they all actually mean.)

3) What boundary conditions should I have set? Currently, I believe this is my main issue: the pipe wall is set to fixedValue which has the effect of actively cooling the system rather than reacting to it.

Once again, thank you for any help you all may be able to give.