Numerical study with OpenFOAM on heat conduction problems in heterogeneous media

•The heat conduction in heterogeneous media is studied with open-source code.•The influences of the heterogeneity k and mesh distribution were investigated.•The discontinuity interface can be captured accurately without special mesh grid. OpenFOAM was used to numerically investigate heat conduction in heterogeneous media. The main advantage of this platform is that it offers an open flexible interface with great convenience for mesh generation and solver modification. Cases of 1D and 2D heat conduction problems in media with different levels of heterogeneity were considered to check the performance of OpenFOAM. The results were compared with references and other commercial software and showed good accuracy. Note that all of the processes, including the mesh generation, numerical simulation, and post-processing, relied on free open-source codes.