Development of a Novel Fully Coupled Solver in OpenFOAM: Steady-State Incompressible Turbulent Flows in Rotational Reference Frames

In this article, the fully coupled block algorithm for the solution of three-dimensional incompressible turbulent flows presented in a companion article [1] is extended for use with multiple reference frames and multiple mesh blocks. The implicit block coupling is applied to the extra rotational terms, and to the multiblock interfaces. Furthermore, implementation details on the linearization of cyclic and other boundary conditions are detailed. These modifications allow the coupled solver to retain its improved performance and robustness in addition to mesh size scalability while solving turbomachinery-type applications. The performance and mesh size scalability of the coupled solver is compared to that of a segregated pressure based solver [2] using three industrial-size test cases.