[chrisvandijk]

Dear all,

For my Master Thesis I am modelling the melting of a certain phase change material (PCM) using an inhouse Univerisity code. I am going to use a cylindrical geometry at different inclination angles.

If the cylinder is upright (i.e. the disc-shaped surfaces of the cylinder are normal to the z direction) the situation is axisymmetric so I can use the wedge type in blockMesh. However, I also want to investigate the effect of inclination angle on the melting. This can be done easiest if I change the orientation of the gravity (e.g. if the cylinder is tilted 45 degrees the gravity now works in the (y-z)/sqrt(2) direction instead of the -z direction). This is important as natural convection, and therefore the rate of melting and the shape of the melting front, is dependent on the angle. However, because there is no circular axisymmetry anymore, I assume I cannot naïvely use the wedge type anymore.

Is there some way how I can use the wedge type (or something similar) for an inclined cylinder? If it's not possible I can always use a 3D model for a half cylinder (as there is one symmetry axis left), but of course that will be much more computationally expensive than a 2D model.

I have mostly worked with blockMesh for my meshes but I would not mind using another way of meshing if necessary. I am using OpenFOAM 8 on Ubuntu 20.04.

Thank you a lot in advance!