LAUSR

Abstract The purpose of this work is two-fold: first, we successfully validate our open-source tool EOF-Library, which efficiently couples Elmer FEM and OpenFOAM, against COMSOL Multiphysics, a commercial simulation package; second, we inform about significant discrepancies between our results and the experimental and simulation data found in a series of research papers. We reproduce the previously published numerical simulations wherein microwaves are supplied to a water domain through a rectangular waveguide, inducing convective flow. This is a conjugate problem with weakly coupled electromagnetics, heat transfer and fluid dynamics. It involves effects such as permittivity dependence on temperature, microwave propagation and absorption, Marangoni effect and buoyancy driven flow. We urge other researchers to study this problem in order to determine the reason for the deviations that we have observed.