SIMULATION OF FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSPORT COUPLED PROCESSES USING FAHET SOFTWARE

FAHET is a software developed to simulate 2D, transient nonlineal conjugate processes of fluid flow and heat transport in porous media. Such problems, which are governed by flow and heat conservation equations and Darcy's law as momentum equation, are formulated using the stream function variable in order to better demonstrate the patterns of flow particle paths. FAHET, developed at the Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT) and based on the network simulation method, carries out the numerical calculus with a standard code of circuit simulation, e.g., Pspice, and uses programming subroutines in MATLAB for both creating the network model and postprocessing the results for better graphical representation, including animations. Finally, the source code C# is used to design the input data interface in a user friendly windows environment. The reliability, power, efficiency and low cost of FAHET make the program a suitable tool for educational and research applications in several fields, particularly in groundwater flow with heat transport processes. Two illustrative applications, the geothermal Yusa problem and the Benard flow between horizontal plates heated from below, are solved to demonstrate the capability of the software.