Does anyone know how to employ a periodic boundary condition across a symmetry plane?

Note: When you specify a face as a periodic boundary, you have to simultaneously specify an opposing face as periodic. My problem is that my opposing face is a symmetry plane and the actual opposing face that, in theory, I should also make periodic doesn't really exist...make sense? I would greatly appreciate any help you all may have to offer.

How have you generated your periodic bc? If I understand you correctly your model has one half of the periodic condition defined but it is not associated with the other periodic surface, which is defined a symmetry boundary. First of all I would go back to your mesh generator and redefine the periodic as another boundary condition, say symmetry, it doesn't really matter what. I would then redefine the periodic condition in fluent using the text interface

/grid/modify-zones/make-periodic

Before you do this you must ensure that the fluid axis is set correctly otherwise the command will fail.

Hope this helps

Mark

Not quite - I have one half of my flow field, with the "inner" surface as the symmetry BC, and the "outer" surface as the face that I want to be periodic. So, when I mirror the results about the symmetry plane, my two "outside" surfaces are to be periodic.

Is this allowed? If so, how would I go about implementing it (since, when you specify a face as periodic, you also have to specify an opposing face as periodic...which in my case doesn't exist because it hasn't yet been reflected about the symmetry plane).

Hopefully this clears it up.

Hi tucker

You cannot apply a periodic BC to only one surface to my knowledge. You'll have to model both halves of your domain.

Sorry

Mark