Abstract
Abstract. Herein, we introduce HydrothermalFoam, a three-dimensional hydro-thermo-transport model designed to resolve fluid flow within submarine hydrothermal circulation systems. HydrothermalFoam has been developed on the OpenFOAM platform, which is a finite-volume-based C++ toolbox for fluid-dynamic simulations and for developing customized numerical models that provides access to state-of-the-art parallelized solvers and to a wide range of pre- and post-processing tools. We have implemented a porous media Darcy flow model with associated boundary conditions designed to facilitate numerical simulations of submarine hydrothermal systems. The current implementation is valid for single-phase fluid states and uses a pure-water equation of state (IAPWS-97). We here present the model formulation; OpenFOAM implementation details; and a sequence of 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D benchmark tests. The source code repository further includes a number of tutorials that can be used as starting points for building specialized hydrothermal flow models. The model is published under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
Highlights
High-temperature hydrothermal circulation through the ocean floor plays a key role in the exchange of mass and energy between the solid earth and the global ocean (German and Seyfried, 2014; Elderfield and Schultz, 1996)
HydrothermalFoam has been developed on the OpenFOAM platform, which is a finite-volume-based C++ toolbox for fluid-dynamic simulations and for developing customized numerical models that provides access to stateof-the-art parallelized solvers and to a wide range of pre- and post-processing tools
We present a toolbox, named HydrothermalFoam, to simulate 2D and 3-D hydrothermal circulation in a single-phase regime for seafloor hydrothermal systems
Summary
High-temperature hydrothermal circulation through the ocean floor plays a key role in the exchange of mass and energy between the solid earth and the global ocean (German and Seyfried, 2014; Elderfield and Schultz, 1996). Due to the high complexity of the heterogeneous sub-seafloor, a continuum porous medium approach is typically used, in which the conservation equations are written for control volumes with effective properties such as Darcy velocity, permeability, and porosity Such approaches have been successfully used to make fundamental progress in our understanding of the nature and mechanisms of hydrothermal transport, including a thermodynamic explanation of black smoker temperatures (Jupp and Schultz, 2000), the three-dimensional structure of hydrothermal circulation cells at mid-ocean ridges (Coumou et al, 2009; Hasenclever et al, 2014), and phase separation phenomena and salinity variations of hydrothermal fluids (Lewis and Lowell, 2009a, b; Coumou et al, 2009; Weis et al, 2014).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
