New Features in FLUENT for CATIA V5.1

The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model is very useful for modeling two-phase flows with a long free surface. This model is beneficial for cases in which two different fluids, typically a gas and a liquid, interact. Applications include fuel cells, ship and boat hydrodynamics, water pumps, and fuel tanks.

FLUENT for CATIA V5 5.0 has many additional features and enhancements. Key enhancements include more robust flow volume creation, user-defined coloring of inlets and outlets, total heat flux specification for walls, periodic specification icon for periodic boundary conditions, and appropriate error messages when meshing volumes using the TGrid filler. Several enhancements have been made for large model handling, such as consistent numbering and highlighting of solid and fluid sides of walls. For problems involving mapping of pressure or temperature data to FEA models for fluid–structure interaction, the user can select geometric features from the viewer or solid features from the specification tree as supports.

For post-processing, a new icon group addresses vector plots. The post-processing icons for contour, vector and pathline plots are grouped together to make them more compact and accessible. It is possible to create cut-planes easily to create slices through 3-D geometry for plotting. Turbulence at walls can be plotted using the additional y quantity. 

For HTML reporting, plots made on the full geometry created using image transformation can be included, and the total power due to torque can be reported for rotating walls. Plotting and reporting capabilities have been added for the VOF model. Users can employ CFD-Post as the external post-processor, allowing the creation of sophisticated plots and reports for both steady-state and transient data.

Solution initialization allows users to initialize from a boundary and to specify a liquid height for open channel flows. The user can run a calculation without any convergence criteria. FLUENT for CATIA V5 5.0 has upgraded to the latest version of the FLUENT solver, ANSYS FLUENT 12.0.  

These new features and enhancements allow users to model new applications, improve process efficiency, achieve better post-processing of results, and access the latest solver and post-processor from ANSYS.  

  • Prism/boundary layer creation can be customized for specific boundary groups, in either mesh parts or the mesh panel.
  • Tetrahedral mesh generation supports growth from quad surface meshes when using the TGrid option.

Properties

  • Material properties can be assigned to multiple mesh parts.

Physics and Solver

  • The FMG initialization technique is available to accelerate the solution of compressible flows.
  • Users can solve for energy without solving for flow, which enables analysis of heat conduction problems in solids and fluids or a staged solution.
  • FLUENT for CATIA V5 supports binary data storage for ANSYS FLUENT case and data files, reducing storage requirements and solution read times.
  • The solver is the latest release of ANSYS FLUENT.
  • Users can launch the ANSYS Workbench platform from FLUENT for CATIA V5 and an ANSYS FLUENT system is automatically created.
  • Post-Processing
  • The file name and location for post-processing plots created in ANSYS CFD-Post can be specified.
  • Transient animations created in ANSYS CFD-Post display flow time.