This simulation is about how a steel kettle filled with water is heated from below. The geometry is axisymmetric with the symmetry axis on the right. The incompressible flow equations and heat equation are coupled by the density variations due to temperature and transport of heat by convection.

Initially the fluid was at rest and at constant temperature.

The ElmerSolver uses a stabilized finite element formulation to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and the heat equation with the convection term. In this simulation linear triangular finite elements were used.

Here you may load an animation of the development of the temperature field mpeg: [~800 Kb]. And here you can see the development of the velocity field near the bottom of the kettle mpeg: [~ 2 Mb].

The figures show the temperature and velocity fields some time after the heating is started.