Convective Term Formulation
The default node attributed to The Transport of Diluted Species Interface assumes chemical species transport through diffusion and convection (a check box to activate migration is available) and implements the mass balance equation in Equation 5-1.
There are two ways to present a mass balance where chemical species transport occurs through diffusion and convection. These are the non-conservative and conservative formulations of the convective term:
(5-3)non-conservative:
(5-4)conservative:
and each is treated slightly differently by the solver algorithms. In these equations D (SI unit: m2/s) is the diffusion coefficient, R (SI unit: mol/(m3·s)) is a production or consumption rate expression, and u (SI unit: m/s) is the solvent velocity field. The diffusion process can be anisotropic, in which case D is a tensor.
If the conservative formulation is expanded using the chain rule, then one of the terms from the convection part, c·u, would equal zero for an incompressible fluid and would result in the non-conservative formulation above. This is in fact the default formulation in this physics interface and ensures that nonphysical source terms do not emerge from a solution for the flow field. To switch between the two formulations, click the Show button () and select Advanced Physics Options.