Analysis on capabilities of density-based solvers within OpenFOAM to distinguish aerothermal variables in diffusion boundary layer

Open source field operation and manipulation (OpenFOAM) is one of the most prevalent open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. It is very convenient for researchers to develop their own codes based on the class library toolbox within OpenFOAM. In recent years, several density-based solvers within OpenFOAM for supersonic/hypersonic compressible flow are coming up. Although the capabilities of these solvers to capture shock wave have already been verified by some researchers, these solvers still need to be validated comprehensively as commercial CFD software. In boundary layer where diffusion is the dominant transportation manner, the convective discrete schemes’ capability to capture aerothermal variables, such as temperature and heat flux, is different from each other due to their own numerical dissipative characteristics and from viewpoint of this capability, these compressible solvers within OpenFOAM can be validated further. In this paper, firstly, the organizational architecture of density-based solvers within OpenFOAM is analyzed. Then, from the viewpoint of the capability to capture aerothermal variables, the numerical results of several typical geometrical fields predicted by these solvers are compared with both the outcome obtained from the commercial software Fastran and the experimental data. During the computing process, the Roe, AUSM+(Advection Upstream Splitting Method), and HLLC(Harten-Lax-van Leer-Contact) convective discrete schemes of which the spatial accuracy is 1st and 2nd order are utilized, respectively. The compared results show that the aerothermal variables are in agreement with results generated by Fastran and the experimental data even if the 1st order spatial precision is implemented. Overall, the accuracy of these density-based solvers can meet the requirement of engineering and scientific problems to capture aerothermal variables in diffusion boundary layer.