[ivan_cozza]

Hi Foamers,
I'm currently interested in simulating some turbomolecular vacuum pump stages. Obviously, as the involved Kn are well below the continuum limit in the first stages, a N-S solution is not appropriate for these calculations. I wonder if dsmcFoam can simulate it. In particular the principal issues are related with the rotating mesh (I need to simulate at least one stator-rotor stage), and with the boundary conditions (I need to fix the pressure at the inlet or at the outlet of the stage).

Is dsmcFoam usable with moving meshes? And, are there some pressure b.c.?

In the paper "The effect of inlet guide vanes and sharp blades on the performance of a turbomolecular pump", JVST-A, 29, 011016 (2011), prof. Bird suggested an alternative method to treat the rotor part. He substituted the moving mesh with a moving reference frame for the particles positions and velocities. In your opinion, is this method implementable in dsmcFoam?

I know, there's a lot of stuff!

Thank for the help,
Ivan