Solid only
Solid-only heat conduction in OpenFOAM: thermal analysis with no fluid at all
Solve conduction through solids on their own — the cheapest thermal analysis available, and often all the question needs.
What it is
No flow, no coupling: conduction through one or more materials with fixed temperatures or fluxes at the boundaries, and convection represented by a coefficient where a surface meets air. Transient adds thermal mass and with it how long the part takes to respond.
What the application sets up
- Conductivity per material, plus density and specific heat when transient
- At least one fixed temperature or flux, since an all-adiabatic model has no answer
- Interfaces between materials where the assembly has several
- Convective coefficients on surfaces exposed to air
- Temperature fields and total heat flow across chosen surfaces
Typical uses
- Insulation thickness and material selection
- Heat spreading through a base, bracket or heat sink
- Warm-up and cool-down times
- Checking a hand-calculated thermal resistance against real geometry
Industries
Sectors where this analysis is routinely asked for.
- General machinery
- Building fabric
- Electronics packaging
- Insulation systems
What comes out
- Temperature distribution
- Heat flow through chosen surfaces
- Thermal resistance of the real geometry
- Warm-up and cool-down curves
OpenFOAM solvers
solidFoam
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.
Every analysis type is exercised end to end on every pass — its case is generated, meshed and run — which establishes that the setup is right, not that the answer matches your geometry. No CFD result is evidence until it is checked against something you trust: a measurement, a hand calculation, or a mesh-refinement study the application will run for you. Treat these results with the judgement you would apply to any CFD you set up yourself.