Frozen-flow thermal
Frozen-flow thermal analysis in OpenFOAM: temperature on a flow field you already have
Solve the temperature field on a converged, frozen flow solution — far cheaper than re-running the flow every time a thermal boundary condition changes.
What it is
The velocity field is computed once and then held fixed while the energy equation is solved on it. It holds whenever the temperature does not materially change the flow, which is most forced-convection work, and it fails exactly where buoyancy starts to matter.
What the application sets up
- A converged flow solution to freeze
- Thermal properties for the fluid and any solids
- Heat sources and thermal boundary conditions
- A check that buoyancy is genuinely negligible, since that is the assumption
- Temperature fields and surface values for the components of interest
Typical uses
- Thermal studies across many power levels on one flow solution
- Component temperature with forced cooling already characterised
- Rapid what-if runs on heat load placement
- Cases where re-solving the flow each time would waste the budget
Industries
Sectors where this analysis is routinely asked for.
- Electronics cooling
- Automotive thermal
- Industrial ovens
- Power electronics
What comes out
- Temperature fields per heat case
- Component temperatures across duty points
- Sensitivity to heat load placement
- Fast what-if comparisons
OpenFOAM solvers
thermoFoam
Selected and configured for you from the analysis type. You can still see every dictionary the application writes.
In every tier
This analysis type is in the free build. The free tier limits mesh size to 250,000 cells and solving to one core — not which physics you may use.
On accuracy, plainly.