Incompressible | Laminar | Heat transfer solver
 

Hello all


I am new to CFD and OpenFoam, I am looking for a solver that can do Laminar | Incompressible | Newtonian | Transient | Heat transfer



icoFoam seems to satisfy all the requirements but it assumes isothermal condition and my main requirement is to estimate heat transfer rate.
overRhoPimpleDyMFoam also has all the requirements but it assumes compressible flow.

From what i read from these forums i have two options either to modify icoFoam to suit the temperature requirements or to use overRhoPimpleDyMFoam but the second option will take long time to solve interms of computer resources.



I am not an expert in CFD and i doubt that modifying icoFoam correctly is going to take a lot of time for me and also i need to validate it so more testing needed.

What should i do and are there any other options for me.

Thanks in advance

Hi,


If you just want to perform heat transfer analysis and work on cases such as natural convection, you should go for buoyantPimpleFoam. It is a compressible solver, but you can set it up to use the Boussinesq approximation if this works for you.



overRhoPimpleDyMFoam is the overset version of rhoPimpleFoam. If you don't need overset capabilities you should rather go for rhoPimpleFoam.


Maybe you can tell us more about what kind of physics you need to simulate? It might make it easier for people to advise a specific solver.


Cheers,
Yann

Hello
I readup more about the different solvers and found out chtmultiregion foam. my case has a heat generating elemnt with conjugate heat transfer (also a thermal pad in between) . but flow is laminar and incompressible

I saw that turbulence can be turned off and also that chtmultiregion foam is also works for incompressible flows

I will do some validation sims to see if it will suit my case. Thanks for the response anyway.

Hi,

You should be able to do pretty much the same thing with chtMultiRegionFoam than with buoyantPimpleFoam: switch off turbulence model and use Boussinesq approximation in thermophysicalProperties.

Let us know how it goes with your validation tests! It's always interesting to have feedback on the forum to see what's possible to do or not.

Have fun,
Yann