Engine coolant jackets: tetrahedral and hexahedralmeshes
Problem description
Simple laminar flow around engine cooling coolant jackets.
Physics and modelling
The first example shown is of a mesh composed of tetrahedral cells; the second example uses hexahedrons. OpenFOAM defines a mesh as a set
of arbitrary polyhedral cells in 3-D, bounded by arbitrary polygonal faces, i.e. the cells can have an unlimited number of faces where, for each face, there is no
limit on the number of edges nor any restriction on its alignment. In addition OpenFOAM has the most extensive set of discretisation schemes enabling the user to
produce a stable solution with the best level of accuracy.
Images
The images show, for both examples, firstly the mesh and then the solution for pressure. The coolant enters the jacket at high pressure and experiences a
pressure drop through the jacket and exits at low pressure.
Author
Simulation by Nabla Ltd. with data supplied by Audi AG.
