OpenFOAM setup (solid)

OpenFOAM has solvers that can also be used for solids. In this tutorial, we use the basic solver laplacianFoam. Most of the configuration files are similar to the Fluid participant.

The case directory for the solid is very similar to the one for the fluid, with less files:

• 0/: State of the domain at time=0. In other words: the initial and boundary conditions.
  • T: Temperature field
• constant/: Model properties
  • transportProperties: Basic transport properties. Solvers that do not use the thermophysical models library use this file. The solver reads only the parameter DT, that is the thermal diffusivity. Since this kind of solver does not read the density or specific heat, we provide the conductivity as a constant in this file and only the adapter reads it.
• system/: Solver properties
  • blockMeshDict: Mesh properties. The mesh is produced with the command blockMesh. In this case, we only have one block, without any grading.
  • controlDict: Time step length, end time, output settings etc
  • fvSchemes: Finite Volume Schemes - the numerical schemes
  • fvSolution: Finite Volume Solution - the numerical solvers' parameters
• Solid.foam: An empty file that serves as a reference to ParaView
• precice-adapter-config.yml: Our adapter's configuration file

Let's see what is different from the Fluid participant.