Joule heating

Table of Contents

• Properties
• Usage
• Further information

This source provides users with the ability to add Joule Heating contributions to any thermal solver.

Properties

The option solves an equation for the electrical potential, V, of the form

\[ \div (\sigma \grad V) = 0 \]

Where \( \sigma \) ( sigma) is the electrical conductivity. The thermal source is then given by

\[ \dot{Q} = (\sigma \grad V ) \dprod \grad V \]

A sample result is shown below

Joule heating example

Usage

The option is specified using:

heating
{
    type            jouleHeatingSource;
    active          true;

    jouleHeatingSourceCoeffs
    {
        anisotropicElectricalConductivity no;
    }
}

The electrical conductivity can be specified using either (see usage):

• If not present the sigma field will be read from file (standard field sigma)
• If the sigma entry is present the electrical conductivity is specified as a (potentially uniform) function of temperature using a Function1 type, e.g.

  heating
  {
      type            jouleHeatingSource;
      active          true;
  
      jouleHeatingSourceCoeffs
      {
          anisotropicElectricalConductivity no;
  
          // Optionally specify sigma as a function of temperature
          sigma           table
          (
              (0      127599.8469)
              (1000   127599.8469)
          );
      }
  }
  

• If the anisotropicElectricalConductivity flag is set to 'true', sigma should be specified as a vector quantity.

Further information

Tutorials

• $FOAM_TUTORIALS/heatTransfer/chtMultiRegionSimpleFoam/jouleHeatingSolid

Source code

• $FOAM_SRC/fvOptions/sources/derived/jouleHeatingSource

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