Modifying actuationDiskSource
 

Hello all,

For my thesis, I am trying to simulate a moving actuator disk that mimics a wind turbine rotor under pitching motion. For that, I created a mesh (whose photo I have attached below) and the VTK of the actuator disk to give you a context of what my model will look like. I created the actuatorDisk cell set using 'topoSet' functionality.

The problem I am facing now is that since the cells' sizes are not uniform, the momentum/source added to the flow field also varies according to the cell size. Unfortunately, I cannot change the mesh structure as this is what I intend to have and a mesh with this structure suits my case better than an orthogonal mesh.

I am trying to achieve a condition where the source term will be the specified value irrespective of the size of the cell. (I have attached a Ux contour to give you context). I am not sure which terms mean what in the 'myActuatorDisk' (which is a clone of Openfoam's native library 'actuationDiskSource' library). Can anyone probably help me find out what the different variables inside 'actuationDiskSource' mean? Specially, the variables 'Usource', 'cellsV' and 'totalV'?

If you already know how to resolve this issue, please feel free to hint at it in the thread! ;P

Kind regards,
Sudharsan.

¡Hola Sudharsan Bharatwaj! Nice to meet you. I'm doing my Master Thesis. I have checked the original actuatorDiskSource .H .C and Templates.C and Usource is the variable that is send to fvMatrix to solve a Ax=B problem, as a source term only for velocity field. By the otherside cellsV and totalV are used to compute the ratio of contribution of forces on each cell (related to the cellZone arranged in topoSet), also applies for other variables. Possibly you have just figured that out too.



How was your experience using the actuatorDisk (with Froude and variableScaling) that openfoam brings? did your CFD result matched with validated data? I don't know why in my case using this tool has computed low deficits of velocity, please, share your experience with this tool if possible.