Numerical simulation of underexpanded air jet using OpenFOAM

Abstract

It is of utmost importance for the awareness of safety issues involved in high pressure gas storage to perceive the adjacent field of high pressure gas jet release for the establishment of the decomposition laws in the far field. The numerical simulations of the first cell of an underexpanded gas jet can be performed executing finite volume solver which can be validated later by means of available literature source. The prominence of OpenFoam is irrefutable fact especially in the research field of fluid dynamics. At the same time it is indisputable that the lack of proper documentation about the authentication of OpenFoam solver may yield ambiguity about the simulation result. Therefore it requires experimental validations and resemblance with the results of other available commercial CFD software packages where the analogy can be drawn with the OpenFoam simulation results for credibility. This report has pursued the assessment of an executable OpenFoam solver known as rhoCentralFoam in terms of its competence of dealing with supersonic air flow due to leakage from high pressure reservoir and compared it to the outcome of practical experiment and other commercial CFD software like KFX and FLACS that are programmed on the basis of some simplified methods.