Parametric model of ventilators simulated in OpenFOAM and Elmer

New Technologies – Research Centre, University of West Bohemia, Univerzitni 8, 306 14 Pilsen, Czech Republic

^a Corresponding author: vacibera@ntc.zcu.cz

Published online: 28 March 2016

Abstract

The main goal of presented work was to develop parametric model of a ventilator for CFD and structural analysis. The whole model was designed and scripted in freely available open source programmes in particular in OpenFOAM and Elmer. The main script, which runs or generates other scripts and further control the course of simulation, was written in bash scripting language in Linux environment. Further, the scripts needed for a mesh generation and running of a simulation were prepared using m4 word pre-processor. The use of m4 allowed comfortable set up of the higher amount of scripts. Consequently, the mesh was generated for fluid and solid part of the ventilator within OpenFOAM. Although OpenFOAM offers also a few tools for structural analysis, the mesh of solid parts was transferred into Elmer mesh format with the aim to perform structural analysis in this software. This submitted paper deals namely with part concerning fluid flow through parametrized geometry with different initial conditions. As an example, two simulations were conducted for the same geometric parameters and mesh but for different angular velocity of ventilator rotation.