Simulation of Thermofluids with Open Source Tools​

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Upon completion of the course, students are able to:
- Solve a wide range of CFD problems using OpenFOAM® (heat transfer, incompressible/compressible flows, turbulent flows, multiphase flows, combustion, dispersed flows).
- Use ParaView to visualize the results from OpenFOAM®.
- Understand the code structure of OpenFOAM® and know the procedures to compile solvers and utilities.
- Identify the proper solver for a specific CFD case.
- Methodologically set up a wide variety of CFD cases.
- Critically assess their own simulation results.
- Create particular solvers and utilities in OpenFOAM®.

Nowadays the use of open source software is increasing, because it fulfills performance and quality requirements of academia and industry at lower costs than commercial solutions. For computational (thermo-)fluid dynamics (CFD) very popular open source software package is OpenFOAM®. This package is based on object-oriented programming language, C++, allowing a great flexibility and extensibility of the code that ease its adaptation to a wide range of problems. However, the freedom and the flexibility have a cost: learning the tool is challenging. Consequently, the main objective of the course is to guide the participants towards using and customizing OpenFOAM® with the motto “learning by doing”.
The class is divided into 9 sessions/weeks.
(1) Introduction to Linux and OpenFOAM®.
After a short review of the Linux tools needed to interact with OpenFOAM®, the way to express a CFD problem will be reviewed. Then a first case will be run and post-processed.
(2) Heat transfer in a plate.
The structure of a solver for heat transfer in solid material will be presented. This solver will be applied to a 2D planar configuration.
(3) Heat transfer in a cooler.
The previous solver will be modified to analyze a defective cooler.
(4) Channel pipe flow.
This case will be the first fluid dynamics problem studied. A laminar flow in a pipe will be simulated.
(5) Locally heated channel pipe flow.
The elements of the two previous exercises will be combined to create a new solver for a thermo-fluids problem at low Reynolds number.
(6) RANS solver for turbulent flows.
Different models for the turbulence will be applied to a backward step configuration.
(7) Combustion.
The different approaches to simulate a reacting flow in OpenFOAM® will be introduced.
(8) Multiphase flow solver.
The volume of fluid method (VoF) will be introduced as a solution to solve two incompressible, isothermal immiscible fluids. As those configurations require lots of resources, the case will be solved in parallel (i.e. using more than 1 processor) on our cluster. In addition the creation of a new boundary conditions will be introduced.
(9) Lagrangian solver.
The usual way to solve continuous fields (e.g. pressure or energy) is to use an Eulerian approach. But for the discrete phases (e.g. a spray of fuel in gas) the Lagrangian approach is more interesting. In this chapter, a Langragian solver of OpenFOAM® will be presented. A new model for the injection of the particles will be implemented and applied to the test case.
With this class additional ECTS in field of soft skills are acquired. The Associate Professorship of Thermo-Fluid Dynamics cooperates with the Center of Key Competencies (Zentrum für Schlüsselkompetenzen) and offers teamwork and presentation workshops, which are undertaken within the framework of this practical course. The aim of these workshops is to combine the technical with the soft skill training. With attending the workshop you will receive 1 ECTS in the field of soft skills. Dates for the team workshop can be found in the course overview in TUMonline and the dates for the presentation workshop can be found directly on the homepage of the Center of Key Competencies.