TEHDBoussinesqPimpleFoam is a solver developed for OpenFOAM, a powerful open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. This solver is designed to handle thermo-electro-hydrodynamic (TEHD) problems, providing a comprehensive toolset for simulating complex interactions between thermal, electrical, and fluidic phenomena. Features in incompressible flows. It also can solve problems in a non-dimensional way.
Clone this repository:
git clone git@github.com:AtmoFlow/TEHDBoussinesqPimpleFoam.git
Compile the solver. This requires the OpenFoam development tools (base-dev or devel)
wmake
Consistent with the scientific community around TEHD, the solver can solve directly in a non-dimensional way. A detailed description of the scaling of variables to obtain a dimensionless equation is provided in the paper. Turbulent flow can only be solved with the dimension-affected solver. By default, the solver runs dimensional. To enable dimensionless calculation add solveDimless yes; to the transportProperties file. For scaling purposes, the non-dimensional solver requires additional properties such as the heat diffusion kappa and the geometric length scale d defined in the same file.
Additional TEHD settings
The solver is derived from the buoyantBoussinesqPimpleFoam. In addition to solving TEHD, the electric potential needs to be defined as Ue in Volts for the boundaries. zeroGradient needs to be set to electric inert boundaries. Additionally, further transport properties need to be defined to solve the dielectrophoretic force, such as the relative permittivity reference epsilonr0 value at temperature TRef but its expansion coefficient e analogous to the Boussinesq approximation for buoyant flows.
Moreover, the solver can process dielectric heating for polar fluids under the influence of an alternative current. For this, the dielectricHeat yes; setting needs to be added to the transportProperties. Then, the solver requires further properties: the frequency f of the alternative source, the heat capacity Cp, and the dissipation factor hdiss.
Rotating reference frame
The solver can solve rotating problems in a rotating reference frame, defining the apparent forces, Coriolis force, and centrifugal force. The rotation axis is not adjustable and is defined as the origin z-axis. The solver considers centrifugal buoyancy by setting the density expansion coefficient beta. The rotation rate is defined as scalar omega in the transport properties.
The example folder provides two examples for the same parameter setting, with the case in the non-dim folder running dimensionless and the case in the dim running dimensional. Allrun runs the mesh construction and decomposition on two cores and starts the parallel calculation, while Allclean returns to the initial state. Two different 0 folders are located in these folders. First, the 0.isotherm defines uniform temperature boundary conditions while 0.atmospheric mimics an atmospheric-like temperature boundary condition used in the paper. The uniform boundary condition is chosen for the tutorial to save calculation resources since the convection develops faster.
Contributions are welcome! If you find any issues or have ideas for improvements, please open an issue or submit a pull request. License
This work is supported by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK) via the German Space Administration (DLR) with grant no. 50WM1841, 50WM2141 and 50WM2441. The numerical calculations for the development were conducted with computing resources of the National High Performance (NHR) Computing infrastructure that received the funding to the project number bbi00021.
Happy simulating!