An OpenFOAM face-centred solver for incompressible flows robust to mesh distortion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a face-centred finite volume solver integrated into OpenFOAM that significantly improves robustness, accuracy, and stability for incompressible flows on distorted meshes, outperforming traditional cell-centred methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel face-centred finite volume solver for incompressible flows in OpenFOAM, demonstrating superior performance on challenging mesh configurations.

Findings

Outperforms standard solvers in convergence and accuracy

Maintains stability on non-orthogonal, skewed, and stretched meshes

Proves robustness through steady-state and transient benchmarks

Abstract

This work presents an overview of mesh-induced errors commonly experienced by cell-centred finite volumes (CCFV), for which the face-centred finite volume (FCFV) paradigm offers competitive solutions. In particular, a robust FCFV solver for incompressible laminar flows is integrated in OpenFOAM and tested on a set of steady-state and transient benchmarks. The method outperforms standard simpleFoam and pimpleFoam algorithms in terms of optimal convergence, accuracy, stability, and robustness. Special attention is devoted to motivate and numerically demonstrate the ability of the FCFV method to treat non-orthogonal, stretched, and skewed meshes, where CCFV schemes exhibit shortcomings.