Creating a rotating plane for a fan without modelling the blades
 

Hi all,

I am trying to run a flow simulation in a duct with a fan placed in the middle without modelling the fan blades.
I have the rotational speed of the fan and the inlet velocity and was thinking if its possible to create some sort of rotating plane where the fan is positioned to simulate swirl from that region.

Can someone guide me on how I should proceed?

Thanks.

Hi all,

Any responses would be appreciated?

Thanks

You could create a baffle in your geometry, and use a cyclic pressure jump condition (see tjunctionfan tutorial if you are not familiar with baffles and cyclic boundary conditions). If you need the swirl you could look into something like the "swirlfanvelocity" as included in v1806:

https://www.openfoam.com/releases/op...conditions.php

Could also look at this tutorial.


I made the initial case to test the workings of the rotorDisk.


https://github.com/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM...Foam/rotorDisk


https://www.openfoam.com/documentati...otor-disk.html


Another way to add swirl is to use porous media. So combine the fan bc with porous media.


http://www.tfd.chalmers.se/~hani/kur...ukurReport.pdf page 10



https://www.openfoam.com/documentati...-jump-fan.html

Try reading up on the actuator disk model if you want realistic simulation of the fan. It makes use of lift and drag data for the fan profile to determine the flow field that would result of the fan. It has been successfully used in applications such as modeling entire air cooled condenser systems for power plants

Thanks for all your responses.

I am going to try out your suggestions and keep you'll posted.

Hey all so I was trying to go with the porous media modelling for the fan blades but I cannot find much documentation on the powerLaw and porosity coefficients. Let's say I know the power loss in watts across the fan (assuming I'm modelling a wind turbine) how can I define those values in 'porosity'?

Hello all,

Any responses? Can someone point me to some tutorial or reference material on how to setup and run the cases?

Thanks

Hey all,

I managed to get the actuator disk to work. But I have a doubt regarding the upstream point in FVOptions.
Can someone please explain what exactly it is since I varied the upstream point of the disk but did not notice any change in results.

Thanks,
Kevin

ActuationDisk
 

Dear Kevin Williams
Could you please explain me briefly how did you get ActuationDisk worked?


Farzad