Laminar flow simulation in square cross-section duct using OpenFOAM

This case study is motivated by the need of having a very simple case that can be simulated in a computational fluid dynamics software. The requirement of the flow case is to have a known exact solution in order to compare with the simulation results. The objective is to simulate the flow using OpenFOAM and to compare the results of the simulation with the exact solution. The simulation was done following the classical computational fluid dynamics workflow: geometry generation, boundary condition imposition, meshing, solving and post-processing. The simulation was performed for three different meshes. Finally, the computational results were compared with the analytical solution. The simulation yielded the velocity profile for fully developed flow, the pressure profile in the longitudinal direction, and the pressure variation per unit length. The results are in agreement with the exact solution of the flow. Therefore, OpenFOAM was able to simulate accurately the flow in terms of velocity and pressure.