A FEM-FVM Coupling Code for Numerical Simulation of a Liquid Metal Heat Exchanger
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Over the past few years, multiscale and multiphysics problems have drawn significant attention from the scientific community. Simulating these complex phenomena requires the integration of multiple physics domains which raises significant challenges for computational tools, as most existing codes are designed to address specific problem types. Two primary strategies have emerged over the years: the monolithic approach, which develops a unified numerical code to model all relevant phenomena, and the coupling of existing validated codes to leverage their strengths and peculiarities. This paper presents a numerical code coupling technique that integrates modules from various Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes into a unified numerical platform, enabling the simulation of coupled multiphysics and multiscale problems. The coupling strategy presented in this work involves the data transfer between the in-house finite element method (FEM) code, FEMuS, and the finite volume method (FVM) code, OpenFOAM. The integration between the CFD codes is performed using the MEDCoupling library, which provides algorithms for efficient in-memory communication. In this work, the numerical coupling application is presented by simulating a Conjugate Heat Transfer problem that thermally couples solid and fluid domains. In particular, the boundary data transfer algorithm is applied to a realistic case of a PbLi-air heat exchanger. Within the fluid domain, the liquid metal turbulent flow is simulated using the FEMuS solver, which employs an anisotropic four-parameter turbulence model specifically designed for low-Prandtl-number fluids. The fluid domain is numerically coupled through the physical fluid-solid interface with the solid one, where OpenFOAM handles the tube energy equation and the fins-air interaction.