Enthalpy/Species Coupling Convention

Enthalpy/species coupling convention

Decision

The solver uses Option A:

h is the transported thermodynamic state.
T is recovered from h, Y, and p0.

When passive species transport updates the composition from Y_old to Y_new, the solver must preserve the transported enthalpy field and recover temperature from the new thermodynamic state:

T_new = T(h_transported, Y_new, p0)

The solver must not preserve old temperature by recomputing enthalpy as:

h_new = h(T_old, Y_new, p0)

That second form can numerically add or remove sensible enthalpy when composition changes without an energy flux/source that accounts for it.

Time-step convention

For the current constant-density, non-reacting enthalpy solver:

1. Advance momentum/projection.
2. Advance passive species, if enabled.
3. Preserve the transported enthalpy h.
4. If Cantera thermo is enabled and transported species may have changed Y:
      sync T/cp/lambda/rho_thermo from h, current Y, and p0
      restore h so the thermo sync cannot alter the transported state
5. Advance h with advection, conduction, and qrad/rho.
6. If Cantera thermo is enabled:
      sync T/cp/lambda/rho_thermo from the updated h and current Y
      restore h so the thermo sync cannot alter the transported state
7. If Cantera thermo is disabled:
      recover T from h with the constant-cp relation.

For species-disabled Cantera thermo runs, step 4 may be skipped after initialization because composition has not changed and the previous post-energy sync already provides current T, cp, lambda, and rho_thermo.


Boundary convention

For fixed-temperature boundaries with species enabled, the boundary enthalpy is:

h_b = h(T_b, Y_b, p0)

where Y_b comes from species boundary-condition evaluation. Dirichlet species boundaries use patch_Y; non-Dirichlet species boundaries fall back to the interior cell composition.

Current limitations

This convention still omits the species-diffusion enthalpy correction:

-div(sum_k h_k J_k)

Do not add reactions or variable-density low-Mach coupling until the passive enthalpy/species tests pass.