TY - JOUR
T1 - interThermalPhaseChangeFoam—A framework for two-phase flow simulations with thermally driven phase change
AU - Nabil, Mahdi
AU - Rattner, Alexander S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was financially supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Krell Institute (contract DE-FG02-97ER25308 ). The funding agency did not actively participate in the research effort or publication process.
Funding Information:
The authors wish to acknowledge generous financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy through the Krell Institute (contract DE-FG02-97ER25308 ), and computing resources from the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under (contract DE-AC02-05CH11231 ). We also wish to acknowledge Sanjay Adhikari, a PhD student, who helped develop some of the testing scripts for tutorial cases.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Author(s)
PY - 2016/4/7
Y1 - 2016/4/7
N2 - The volume-of-fluid (VOF) approach is a mature technique for simulating two-phase flows. However, VOF simulation of phase-change heat transfer is still in its infancy. Multiple closure formulations have been proposed in the literature, each suited to different applications. While these have enabled significant research advances, few implementations are publicly available, actively maintained, or inter-operable. Here, a VOF solver is presented (interThermalPhaseChangeFoam), which incorporates an extensible framework for phase-change heat transfer modeling, enabling simulation of diverse phenomena in a single environment. The solver employs object oriented OpenFOAM library features, including Run-Time-Type-Identification to enable rapid implementation and run-time selection of phase change and surface tension force models. The solver is packaged with multiple phase change and surface tension closure models, adapted and refined from earlier studies. This code has previously been applied to study wavy film condensation, Taylor flow evaporation, nucleate boiling, and dropwise condensation. Tutorial cases are provided for simulation of horizontal film condensation, smooth and wavy falling film condensation, nucleate boiling, and bubble condensation. Validation and grid sensitivity studies, interfacial transport models, effects of spurious currents from surface tension models, effects of artificial heat transfer due to numerical factors, and parallel scaling performance are described in detail in the Supplemental Material (see Appendix A). By incorporating the framework and demonstration cases into a single environment, users can rapidly apply the solver to study phase-change processes of interest.
AB - The volume-of-fluid (VOF) approach is a mature technique for simulating two-phase flows. However, VOF simulation of phase-change heat transfer is still in its infancy. Multiple closure formulations have been proposed in the literature, each suited to different applications. While these have enabled significant research advances, few implementations are publicly available, actively maintained, or inter-operable. Here, a VOF solver is presented (interThermalPhaseChangeFoam), which incorporates an extensible framework for phase-change heat transfer modeling, enabling simulation of diverse phenomena in a single environment. The solver employs object oriented OpenFOAM library features, including Run-Time-Type-Identification to enable rapid implementation and run-time selection of phase change and surface tension force models. The solver is packaged with multiple phase change and surface tension closure models, adapted and refined from earlier studies. This code has previously been applied to study wavy film condensation, Taylor flow evaporation, nucleate boiling, and dropwise condensation. Tutorial cases are provided for simulation of horizontal film condensation, smooth and wavy falling film condensation, nucleate boiling, and bubble condensation. Validation and grid sensitivity studies, interfacial transport models, effects of spurious currents from surface tension models, effects of artificial heat transfer due to numerical factors, and parallel scaling performance are described in detail in the Supplemental Material (see Appendix A). By incorporating the framework and demonstration cases into a single environment, users can rapidly apply the solver to study phase-change processes of interest.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.softx.2016.10.002
DO - 10.1016/j.softx.2016.10.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84993999911
VL - 5
SP - 216
EP - 226
JO - SoftwareX
JF - SoftwareX
SN - 2352-7110
ER -