Floating potential boundary condition in openfoam®

Abstract

In OpenFOAM®, the powerful CFD solver can be combined with an electrostatic solver, allowing multiphysics analysis on the same mesh within the same numerical framework, which offers advantages for applications in high voltage power devices. One important piece of missing functionality in OpenFOAM® is a boundary condition for the electrostatic solver that can apply a floating potential to conducting parts that are not connected to any fixed potential and should be treated as an equipotential surface of undefined potential. This chapter describes the theoretical background and an OpenFOAM® implementation of a numerical algorithm that can accurately solve the electrostatic problem for a domain that includes several floating potentials.