Transient and steady-state air flow simulations in generators using OpenFOAM

Report, 2012

The flow of air in two generator geometries has been simulated with OpenFOAM-1.6-ext and the results compared against CFX. The effect of the different simulation strategies as well as numerical methods, turbulence models, matrix linear solvers, matrix solver preconditioners, mesh resolutions, rotor-stator interface locations and boundary conditions on the flow has been examined. The convergence, computational time, flow field, axial torque on the rotor and windage losses have been observed and conclusions have been drawn.