CFD Online Discussion Forums - New guy trying to solve his first simple Heat Transfer simulation.

Hi all,

I'm trying to do my first non-tutorial simulation with OpenFOAM and I could really use some help. I'll first explain what I would like to do and then I'll ask my questions.

I am trying to model and mesh a heat sink with a power source sitting directly on top of the heat sink. At first, I just want to model natural convection (for simplicity sake), but I would also like to model forced convection as if a fan with a specific CFM was at the entrance of the heat sink, pushing the hot air away from the heat source.

Hopefully this is simple enough, as I'm really just trying to understand how to build a simulation from scratch. On a side note, I have downloaded the Helyx-OS as an assisting tool to ease the burden of learning OpenFOAM.

Besides really needing any advice you can offer, my questions are as follows:

1. Should I import my Solidworks designed heatsink.stl and attempt to mesh that? Or would it be easier to try and build the heat sink within Helyx-OS/OpenFOAM?

2. What is the best way to mesh this design? Do I need to use snappyHexMesh or can I just use blockMesh for simplicity?

3. What solver should I be using for this simulation? I tried reading through the solver definitions but I feel like a couple could apply here so what would you recommend?

4. How do I go about putting a heat source on top of the modelled heat sink?

I'm sorry for all of the questions, but as I'm sure you can tell, I'm really lost on where to begin. I have gone through the OpenFOAM tutorials as well as some Helyx-OS tutorials so I know the basics of how to run a simulation from start to finish, but all the examples I did were not very applicable to my simulation.

If you have any advice at all please let me know. Thank you sooooooooo much in advance for any help you might give. :)