Week 9 Update

Since the modelling of the project was complete, the team decided to reassign roles for the last few weeks. One member of the modelling team began to help the meshing team and the other member began a comparison study using ANSYS FLUENT. This study should be able to show the accuracy of Open Source software and also give an insight into the practicality of such software. A similar simulation will be carried out to give the best indication that can be made. This will help the team conclude whether Open Source software is worthwhile to use.

The meshing team are continuing to mesh the final geometry and expect this to be finished by the end of next week at the latest. At the moment, the mesh is failing the checkMesh due to skewed cells at the outer most regions of the model. The team are working on fixing this problem.

The solving team have also solved a problem that confused the tam throughout the project. Even though the conduction through the solid was clearly visible and working, the team were not convinced the results from post-processing were correct. The team realised the model was incredibly large due to dimensions being changed throughout the transition of software packages being put to default. By the time the model got to OpenFOAM the dimensions had been changed from millimetres to metres without the team knowing. Solving this issue meant conduction was shown as a more expected result.

The team also have realised that for the heat sink we require SWAK4FOAM which is a tool that can be used to gain the heat flux at each iteration which is what we require. We are currently in communication will our project advisor to secure administrative approval for this tool to be installed onto our laboratory computers. Once this is done, the team expects the heat sink to be implemented very quickly.

Once the solving team has everything ready, the next step will be to apply this to the final model and then to gain our final results for the heat exchanger.