ISSN Online: 2379-1748
ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-431-1
ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-430-4
First Thermal and Fluids Engineering Summer Conference
COMPARISON OF FINITE ELEMENT AND FINITE VOLUME ANALYSIS FOR ROUGH SURFACES USING MAPPED DOMAINS
Abstract
The heat transfer from a domain with surface roughness to an underlying substrate is a function of the statistical
nature of the roughness. It is rarely possible to characterize the conduction by an analytical expression.
Consequently the simulation is usually done using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation based upon finite element or
finite volume methods. For the MC simulations, each realization of the surface roughness requires a unique
mesh leading to high computational costs. If the domain is mapped to a unit square or cube the mesh generation
costs can be reduced. However, mapping introduces anisotropy into the modeling equations. Furthermore
the mapping can be conservative or non-conservative in form, raising the question of which form is best.
This paper analyses the effect of the induced anisotropy on the accuracy of finite element and finite volume
methods.