for thermophysical transport within stationary solid phases. This provides a
consistent interface to heat transport within solids for single and now
multiphase solvers so that for example the wallHeatFlux functionObject can now
be used with multiphaseEuler, see tutorials/multiphaseEuler/boilingBed.
Also this development supports anisotropic thermal conductivity within the
stationary solid regions which was not possible previously.
The tutorials/multiphaseEuler/bed and tutorials/multiphaseEuler/boilingBed
tutorial cases have been updated for phaseSolidThermophysicalTransportModel by
changing the thermo type in physicalProperties.solid to heSolidThermo. This
change will need to be made to all multiphaseEuler cases involving stationary
phases.
This change makes multiphaseEuler more consistent with other modules and
makes its sub-libraries less inter-dependent. Some left-over references
to multiphaseEulerFoam have also been removed.
requiring all parts of the moving phase solution algorithm to loop and operate
on the moving phases only making the code easier to understand and maintain.
The central coefficient part of the virtual-mass phase acceleration matrix is
now included in the phase velocity transport central coefficient + drag matrix
so that the all the phase contributions to each phase momentum equation are
handled implicitly and consistently without lagging contribution from the other
phases in either the pressure equation or phase momentum correctors.
This improves the conditioning of the pressure equation and convergence rate of
bubbly-flow cases.
Population balance size-group fraction 'f<index>.<phase>' fields are now
read from an 'fDefault.<phase>' field if they are not provided
explicitly. This is the same process as is applied to species fractions
or fvDOM rays. The sum-of-fs field 'f.<phase>' is no longer required.
The value of a fraction field and its boundary conditions must now be
specified in the corresponding field file. Value entries are no longer
given in the size group dictionaries in the constant/phaseProperties
file, and an error message will be generated if a value entry is found.
The fraction fields are now numbered programatically, rather than being
named. So, the size-group dictionaries do not require a name any more.
All of the above is also true for any 'kappa<index>.<phase>' fields that
are constructed and solved for as part of a fractal shape model.
The following is an example of a specification of a population balance
with two phases in it:
populationBalances (bubbles);
air1
{
type pureIsothermalPhaseModel;
diameterModel velocityGroup;
velocityGroupCoeffs
{
populationBalance bubbles;
shapeModel spherical;
sizeGroups
(
{ dSph 1e-3; } // Size-group #0: Fraction field f0.air1
{ dSph 2e-3; } // ...
{ dSph 3e-3; }
{ dSph 4e-3; }
{ dSph 5e-3; }
);
}
residualAlpha 1e-6;
}
air2
{
type pureIsothermalPhaseModel;
diameterModel velocityGroup;
velocityGroupCoeffs
{
populationBalance bubbles;
shapeModel spherical;
sizeGroups
(
{ dSph 6e-3; } // Size-group #5: Fraction field f5.air2
{ dSph 7e-3; } // ...
{ dSph 8e-3; }
{ dSph 9e-3; }
{ dSph 10e-3; }
{ dSph 11e-3; }
{ dSph 12e-3; }
);
}
residualAlpha 1e-6;
}
Previously a fraction field was constructed automatically using the
boundary condition types from the sum-of-fs field, and the value of both
the internal and boundary field was then overridden by the value setting
provided for the size-group. This procedure doesn't generalise to
boundary conditions other than basic types that store no additional
data, like zeroGradient and fixedValue. More complex boundary conditions
such as inletOutlet and uniformFixedValue are incompatible with this
approach.
This is arguably less convenient than the previous specification, where
the sizes and fractions appeared together in a table-like list in the
sizeGroups entry. In the event that a substantial proportion of the
size-groups have a non-zero initial fraction, writing out all the field
files manually is extremely tedious. To mitigate this somewhat, a
packaged function has been added to initialise the fields given a file
containing a size distribution (see the pipeBend tutorial for an example
of its usage). This function has the same limitations as the previous
code in that it requires all boundary conditions to be default
constructable.
Ultimately, the "correct" fix for the issue of how to set the boundary
conditions conveniently is to create customised inlet-outlet boundary
conditions that determine their field's position within the population
balance and evaluate a distribution to determine the appropriate inlet
value. This work is pending funding.
The momentum equation central coefficient and drag matrix is formulated,
inverted and used to eliminate the drag terms from each of the phase momentum
equations which are combined for formulate a drag-implicit pressure equation.
This eliminates the lagged drag terms from the previous formulation which
significantly improves convergence for small particle and Euler-VoF high-drag
cases.
It would also be possible to refactor the virtual-mass terms and include the
central coefficients of the phase acceleration terms in the drag matrix before
inversion to further improve the implicitness of the phase momentum-pressure
coupling for bubbly flows. This work is pending funding.
The phase velocity mean adjustment was introduced for consistency with phase
flux mean adjustment which is necessary to ensure the mean flux divergence is
preserved. However for systems with very high drag it has proved preferable to
not adjust the velocity of the phases to conserve momentum rather than ensure
consistency with the fluxes.
The old fluid-specific rhoThermo has been split into a non-fluid
specific part which is still called rhoThermo, and a fluid-specific part
called rhoFluidThermo. The rhoThermo interface has been added to the
solidThermo model. This permits models and solvers that access the
density to operate on both solid and fluid thermophysical models.
Mixture classes (e.g., pureMixtrure, coefficientMulticomponentMixture),
now have no fvMesh or volScalarField dependence. They operate on
primitive values only. All the fvMesh-dependent functionality has been
moved into the base thermodynamic classes. The 'composition()' access
function has been removed from multi-component thermo models. Functions
that were once provided by composition base classes such as
basicSpecieMixture and basicCombustionMixture are now implemented
directly in the relevant multi-component thermo base class.
This avoids potential hidden run-time errors caused by solvers running with
boundary conditions which are not fully specified. Note that "null-constructor"
here means the constructor from patch and internal field only, no data is
provided.
Constraint and simple BCs such as 'calculated', 'zeroGradient' and others which
do not require user input to fully specify their operation remain on the
null-constructor table for the construction of fields with for example all
'calculated' or all 'zeroGradient' BCs.
A special version of the 'inletOutlet' fvPatchField named 'zeroInletOutlet' has
been added in which the inlet value is hard-coded to zero which allows this BC
to be included on the null-constructor table. This is useful for the 'age'
functionObject to avoid the need to provide the 'age' volScalarField at time 0
unless special inlet or outlet BCs are required. Also for isothermalFilm in
which the 'alpha' field is created automatically from the 'delta' field if it is
not present and can inherit 'zeroInletOutlet' from 'delta' if appropriate. If a
specific 'inletValue' is require or other more complex BCs then the 'alpha'
field file must be provided to specify these BCs as before.
Following this improvement it will now be possible to remove the
null-constructors from all fvPatchFields not added to the null-constructor
table, which is most of them, thus reducing the amount of code and maintenance
overhead and making easier and more obvious to write new fvPatchField types.