[arashgmn]

I'm trying to sample on the surface of a rotating body. The mesh doesn't change during the rotation (part of the mesh is rotating with the body).

I configured the samping postProcessing function in controlDict as follows:

Surf //folder name
{
	type            surfaces;	
    libs            (sampling);
    writeControl    writeTime;

    surfaceFormat   vtk;
    fields          (p U);

	surfaces 
	{
		surface_pU //file name
		{
			type 				patch;
			patches				("Airfoil");
			interpolate 		true;
			invariant       	true;  // Unaffected by mesh motion
	 		// Optional: whether to leave as faces (=default) or triangulate
			// triangulate false;
			fixedLocations 		false;
			format				ascii;
		}
	}
	    // Optional (inherited) entries
	region          region0;
    enabled         true;
    log             true;
    timeStart       0;
    timeEnd         $endTime;
    executeControl  writeTime;
    executeInterval 1;
    writeControl    timeStep;
    writeInterval   1;
}

and successfully ran it via

pimpleFoam -postProcess

. Now I have a bunch of files in the subdirectories of Surf folder as vtk. So far So good.

The problem, if there's any, is that despite the movement of the surface, the surface sample files, "seem" fixed in space. Nevertheless, surface values are reasonable. The picture below shows it more clearly:

My airfoil, starts pitching from a horizontal orientation (at time 0) counter clockwise. In paraview, however, the loaded vtk files are still horizontal, despite the fact that the are for time 0.06 in which the airfoil is inclined.



I switched the

invariant

option true and false. Yet didn't see any difference. So what does this option do really?

[olesen]

Originally Posted by arashgmn

I switched the

invariant

option true and false. Yet didn't see any difference. So what does this option do really?

Like the comment states

// Unaffected by mesh motion

This can be useful in some specialized cases. For example, you are sampling a slice in the wake of a vehicle, any you know that the rotating wheels and the fan simply do not affect which cells this slice samples. By specifying invariant, you are saying that you although OpenFOAM may have moved some points around the wheels, you know that this does not affect your sample region so you can save generating irrelevant output geometry for your sampled surface. Currently it is only the ensight writer that can properly benefit from this. VTK output always includes the geometry and doesn't care if it changed or not.


Summary: for your case leave invariant off. Your problem is elsewhere. Having said that, it looks like the sampling mechanism is not being properly expired on the mesh motion. Would suggest providing a small test case on https://develop.openfoam.com/Develop...nfoam/-/issues