Analysis of Coupling Methodologies Between CFD Codes
Please login to view abstract download link
This paper explores the integration of multiple Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes within a unified numerical platform to enable simulations of coupled multi-physics problems. The objective is to develop a versatile and robust tool capable of simulating complex systems that can encompass multiple regions with different and interconnected physical phenomena. The coupling of these codes is achieved through the use of the external library MEDCoupling. This library has been developed to provide tools that allow the communications of different codes directly in memory (i.e. without using external files), ranging from a common data file format, field management over computational domains and interpolation schemes. The platform is tested coupling the in-house finite element code FEMuS with OpenFOAM an open-source finite volume code. Both packages can be used to simulate complex engineering problems such as fluid-structure interaction, heat transfer and turbulent flow phenomena. In the results presented in this paper, we aim to test the feasibility of the proposed approach and the improvement of the simulation results compared to the results obtained considering a one-code approach. Through detailed simulations and validation studies for turbulent flow and heat transfer problems, the authors demonstrate the versatility of the platform.
