Python Software Foundation - SfePy : GSoC 2013 : Week 12 & 13

Hi Pythonistas,

PS: I will get a bit informal in today's report. Do forgive me for that.

Past 14 days have given me the best coding experience of my lifetime. After doing rigorous research I had formalized my problem statement earlier and started working on it. I realised the true intricacies in my problem when I started searching for methods by which phase change simulations are implemented. I had to change my earlier timeline and jump to my project problem directly. This field is a relatively new field and the algorithms have been developed surrounding the legacy SIMPLE algorithm by Patankar. From Brent, A.D., Voller, V.R. and Reid, K.J.(1988) to Chakraborty, P R and Dutta, P (2011), people have developed the enthalpy update scheme for accounting phase change keeping Patankar's algorithm as the base. I was familiar with SIMPLE algorithm earlier so I have developed a phase change solver for SfePy using Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure Linked Equations (Revised) or SIMPLER algorithm which is much more robust than SIMPLE algorithm.

The solver code is located here.
Download test problem file here.

Run python brent_test.py
You will get an output dir containing the vtk files which can be viewed using
./postproc.py <file>.vtk

Sample:

The entire group can be loaded in Paraview and you can get the animation.

The code has been validated for the melting gallium experiment performed by Gau and Viskanta(1986) & Brent et al.(1988).

You can see that the code is following the trend and the difference is due to the slight change in thermophysical properties of Gallium taken in the code which might be different while performing the experiments.

Do leave your views in the comments below.

Regards,
Ankit