Computational analysis in underexpanded jets simulations

Flammable gases leaks at high pressures are hazardous, especially the free underexpanded jets. Therefore, understanding their behavior is fundamental to guarantee a safe environment. Due to the difficulty to obtain experimental data from free under expanded jets, related to the great speeds and gradients, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has become an essential tool. Simulations for free underexpanded jets to identify algorithms that better represent this problem were performed in this work. The analysis involved different algorithms for fluid flow solution and a local time stepping approach using both OpenFOAM and ANSYS Fluent CFD packages. Our study concluded that all algorithms and software studied had a satisfactory result compared to experimental data. However, we observed that Fluent had a considerable advantage because the simulation was faster compared with other solvers in OpenFOAM, for instance.