[KarenRei]

Hi all! I'm working on simulating an aerospike here with sonicFoam, and am quite happy to have finally gotten it to run stably rather than crashing out with negative temperatures (the solution for anyone reading: drop your p tolerance by a couple orders of magnitude). However.... now I'm confused by the results I'm seeing

(Note about the model: since it's an annular aerospike, its modeled as a wedge; the left-hand side is the center of the aerospike, aka a thickness of zero)

First the velocity:



All well and good. We have a jet of superhot (>5000K) gas moving at the speed of sound in the gas mixture (1300m/s) leaving the throat (the little angled bit at the bottom-center) in that direction, you expect to see things get moving!

But pressure and temperature, however...



How can it possibly be 5569 degrees at that port, yet ambient temperature everywhere else? Likewise:



It's leaving that port at 100 atmospheres.... but then is immediately down to zero? And what's up with that thing on the left? That should be the *lowest pressure* place! :Þ

I plan to try making the model "cleaner" to see if that helps any... but as it stands I'm a bit baffled. Thoughts on what might be going on? I'm attaching the blockMeshDict, p, U, and T files it's run with in case that helps. A summary:

blockMeshDict:
top (what shows up as the bottom on the screen): patch
bottom (what shows up as the top): patch
far (wedge wall): wedge
near (the opposite wedge wall): wedge
inner (zero-area left-side of the screen, center of the engine): symmetryPlane
circumference (the right-hand edge): patch
rocket_inner (all of the parts that are not actively spewing gas): wall
engine (the part that is spewing gas): patch

p:
top: fixedValue, ~100kPa
bottom: waveTransmissive
far: wedge
near: wedge
inner: symmetryPlane
circumference: waveTransmissive
rocket_inner: zeroGradient
engine: fixedValue, ~10 MPa
defaultFaces: empty

T:
top: fixedValue, 300K
bottom: zeroGradient
far: wedge
near: wedge
inner: symmetryPlane
circumference: zeroGradient
rocket_inner: zeroGradient
engine: fixedValue, 5569K
defaultFaces: empty

U:
top: fixedValue, (0,0,0)
bottom: zeroGradient
far: wedge
near: wedge
inner: symmetryPlane
circumference:zeroGradient
rocket_inner: fixedValue, (0,0,0)
engine: fixedValue, uniform (-650, 1125, 0)
defaultFaces: empty

[KarenRei]

Solution was to decrease the tolerances in fvSolution.