What is 'topoSet'?
 

Hi All,

I'm working on the turbineSiting tutorial.

I wondered if someone has found a comprehensive explanation of the topoSet application. The wiki page does not really document it's purpose within the overall simulation workflow.

Kind Regards,

Anders

I found this in another thread which is somewhat relevant. Still some comprehensive documentation would be good

¨Is it the solver (simpleFoam) that throws this error or fluentMeshToFoam? Either way, here's the generic explanation of how this tutorial is setup.

To model the presence of the turbine rotor, a momentum source term is used. The mechanics of adding the source term in that tutorial is through fvOptions - a generic method to add a momentum source term at run-time. The particular type used is called "actuationDiskSource". The type and necessary parameters are specified in the ./system/fvOptions file. You'll notice in that file the selectionMode is "cellSet" with it's name on the next line. A cellSet is simply a group of "marked" cells on which you can perform specific operations - in this case, applying a momentum source. cellSet's (or any other type of sets) are stored in the ./constant/polyMesh/sets/ directory.

If you look in the Allrun script of the tutorial, you'll notice it runs "topoSet" - this is the step that creates the cellSet's. Unless provided, "topoSet" looks for ./system/topoSetDict for the definitions so look in that file for how it works.

Since you're using your own mesh, you need to figure out where you want your actuator disk to be applied and run "topoSet" to create the cellSet before running the solver. Dig around the OpenFOAM wiki and the forums for help on using topoSet

Let me finish by saying, the generation of the mesh and cellSet are done in parallel so the final mesh and sets reside in the ./processor*/constant/polyMesh/ directories rather than simply the ./constant/polyMesh/ directory. ¨