COMSOL 4.

2 TUTORIAL
Example 3 (MOMENTUM TRANSFER) Consider two immiscible and viscous liquids, water and transformer oil, flowing at 300 k in the z-direction in a horizontal thin slit of length 0.5 m and width 0.1 m under the influence of a pressure gradient. Both liquids can be considered as incompressible. At the inlet both liquids can be assumed to have the same pressure of 0.02 Pa. Determine the corresponding velocity profile for each fluid.

To simplify the analysis it is convenient to define two subdomains or regions. The first subdomain consists of the liquid water phase and the second one the liquid oil phase. The governing equation for this problem is the Navier-Stokes equation, which is a part of the laminar flow physics in COMSOL. The walls should have no slip boundary conditions and the outlet can be set to zero pressure.The geometry of the system may be defined as follows.

Model Wizard: After opening COMSOL the model wizard will appear to guide you through the initialization of your model. The model wizard asks you what dimensions, physics and study type will be appropriate for your model. For this model Space Dimension: 2D

Physics: Laminar flow

Study Type: Stationary

Complete the Model Wizard by left clicking the finish flag. The interface should now change to geometry. Geometry: The geometry of our system can be broken into two regions. Both of which are rectangles of width 0.5 m and height of 0.05 m. One of these regions will contain water, the other oil. Rectangle 1: First, right click the geometry tab and left click rectangle from the menu. Next, enter the dimension of the rectangle as below.

Rectangle 2: Do exactly as you did for the first rectangle. Right click geometry and then left click on rectangle and set the dimensions as before. Placement: You now have two rectangles of the same dimensions overlapping each other so you can only see one. Left click the rectangle you see and drag it so that one of your rectangles is right on top of the other. If done properly your display should look like the one below.

Materials: The materials tab is where you can assign the water and oil to their respective domains. We want to assign water to the top domain (rectangle) and transformer oil to the bottom domain. Water: Left click on the Material tab. At the top of your interface should be a tab that says Material Browser, left click this and then enter water into the search bar. Click search.

Right click water, liquid and left click add material to model, this will make all domains (the upper and lower rectangles) water. This is not what we want, remove the water properties from the lower rectangle (which will be oil) by left clicking it to highlight and then right click to remove selection. Your screen should look like the one below.

Transformer Oil: Again go into the material browser, this time search for transformer oil. Add this to the model as before by right clicking and subsequently left clicking add material to model.

Add this material to the lower domain (the lower rectangle). Do this by left clicking and then right clicking the lower domain while in the transformer oil interface. Your screen will look like the one below.

Laminar Flow: We need to apply the appropriate conditions to our domains so that the correct form of the Navier-Stokes equation can be solved. We will need to set our boundary conditions for inlet, outlet and walls, in addition we need to input the temperature for our model (300k) and select the incompressible form of the Navier-Stokes equation. Incompressible Flow: Left click on the laminar flow tab, this will display the governing equation for our model as well as the physical model being used. Under physical model left click the compressibility drop down menu, and select incompressible.

Should become

Temperature: Open up the sub tabs under Laminar Flow and left click the fluid properties tab.

In the temperature field type 300 [k]

Inlet: Right click the Laminar Flow tab and select the inlet boundary condition. Apply this boundary condition to the leftmost surfaces.

Change the boundary condition to pressure no viscous stress by left clicking on the drop down menu. This will allow you to see a field to enter the inlet pressure. Set this to 0.02 Pa.

Outlet: Right click the Laminar Flow tab and select the outlet boundary condition. Apply this boundary condition to the rightmost surfaces.

By default this sets the pressure at this surface to 0, as we wanted. Walls: We wanted to apply the no slip condition to both the upper and lower walls (top and bottommost surfaces), this has been done by default by COMSOL. To confirm you may click the sub tab Wall 1 and observe that the no slip condition has indeed been applied to the top and bottom surfaces. Study: We are now ready to compute our solution. Right click on study and left click the compute buttons (looks like an equals sign). The velocity surface plot below should be displayed by default.

Results: Under the results tab you are afforded a great many options for data evaluation. We will look at the cut line and stream line features. Cut Line: This will allow us to take a look at the velocity profile. Under the results tab right click on the data sets sub tab and then left click on cut line 2D.

We need to input the two points that define the 2D cut line. We will use the points x= 0.45 y= 0.1 and x=0.45 y=0.

We now need a place to display this cut line data. Right click the results tab and left click 1D plot group. This will create a 1D plot group tab below the surface tabs.

Right click on the 1D plot group tab and then left click line graph, this will create a sub tab to the 1D plot group tab named line graph 1

Left click this to bring up the line graph interface. In the data set pull down menu select cut line 2D 1

Finally click the plot button at the top right of the interface. This resembles a paint brush.

To change the x axis from arc length to y simply open the drop down menu in the line graph interface under x axis and change it from arc length to expression, then type y in the field that appears.

Pressing the plot button again will update the graph with the changed x axis.

Streamlines: Streamlines visualize the path a particle from a given starting point would take as it is carried by the flow. First left click on the velocity surface.

Right click velocity then left click the streamline button. The streamline interface will now be open. Under selection in the interface open the drop down menu and select all boundaries.

Just below the selection region in the streamline interface will be the streamline positioning region, wherein you may input the number of streamlines you would like to display. Change this field from its default 20 to 100. Finally click the plot button.