We are back in with our what’s new series in 2023 and we are starting with computational fluid dynamics this time. Let’s review the offerings first from products perspective. Under the DS umbrella, CFD has two flavors: the conventional Navier Stokes based flow and the high  fidelity Lattice Boltzmann based flow. The first one is available as a 3DExperience Native role called as Fluid Mechanics Engineer. The second one is available as two stand alone products called as PowerFLOW and XFLOW which can be connected to the 3DExperience Platform through PowerBy. In this blog article we are focused on the Navier Stokes solution.

All the enhancements in 2022x FD’s and 2023x are grouped in 4 categories: Usability, Modeling and Meshing, Solver completeness and Results completeness. That does not mean though that everything is complete. New features and better user experience is a trend in simulation products that will continue.

USABILITY:

• Reduce task time by automated history output requests:                                             2022xFD04

In previous releases all the field and history outputs should be created manually. In Fluid problems, mass flow rates and other outputs are usually requested at inlets and outlets. The output request becomes tedious in multi inlet and multi outlet flows such as the one shown below. To make this task fast automatic history output is now performed by FMK at all the inlets and outlets. History outputs at all the wall boundaries is also automated to get faster outputs such as wall heat transfer coefficients and wall shear stresses.

MODELING AND MESHING:

• Reduced Hardware Requirements                                                                                               2022xFD03

Memory consumption often peaks during Hex Dominant meshing of large 3D Models. A lot of elements are stacked in near the walls to capture the boundary layers accurately. The peak memory consumption in hex dominant mesh has been reduced by 30 to 40 percent in the new release.

SOLVER COMPLETENESS:

• Enhancement in the multiphase flow modeling                                                               2022xFD01

The volume of fluids method can now accommodate compressibility in the lighter phase. In prior release, both the flows needed to be fully incompressible. Please note that single phase flows can still accept compressible flows.

• Simplified Set Up for perforated plates                                                                               2022xFD01

Perforated plates are used in electronics cooling. Their thermal properties are often specified through the P-V charts. However, these charts may not be available all the time. Moreover, FMK role being claimed as designer friendly should not expect a designer to understand the P-V charts. The new enhancement can extract the required thermal coefficients of perforated plates from the geometric dimensions of the plate

• Simplified Set Up for compact heat sink                                                                           2022xFD02

This is an extension of the previous enhancement and applicable to electronics cooling. The thermal properties of the heat sink, such as conductivity and viscous resistance can be extracted by FMK through geometric dimensions.

• Multiphase efficiency improvements                                                                                   2022xFD03

This enhancement relates to the solution time for multiphase volume of fluids problems. Usually the solver has a single global time step to solve all equations including the multiphase equation. The multiphase time step should be smaller to avoid problems of diffusion and mass imbalance at the two phase interface. As multiphase equation takes more time, the entire solution time is increased in case of a single global time step. This enhancement solves multiphase equation in a different time step from global time step. Its an efficient approach for tank sloshing kind of problems.

• New History Variables                                                                                                             2022xFD03

The total mass and individual phase masses have been added as additional variables. The monitor window can now show mass imbalance at the interface as the simulation proceeds.

• New Euler Solver                                                                                                                       2022xFD04

A new inviscid solver has been introduced for Aerospace and Defense industry for inviscid i.e. Non Viscous flows. Now there is a choice between Laminar, Turbulent and Inviscid flow in the physics definition.

RESULTS COMPLETENESS:

• Reduced turnaround time for error detection                                                                   2022xFD02

There is now full access to results explorer app for fields plot during solving. The user does not need to wait till the end of simulation to see the accuracy of results. Any unacceptable results can be checked during the run and analysis can be terminated, if needed. This feature is available for all kind of workflows. It works only in local non-interactive and remote execution mode. Not applicable to local interactive.

• Non uniform mesh vector visualization                                                                               2022xFD03

This is applicable to the symbol plots. The enhancement is to get a uniform vector arrows output over a non uniform mesh. This is achieved by plotting arrows on a regular grid instead of element centroid or nodes. The default old plotting method is still available.

This is the end of this blog article but not the end of enhancements. There is a long list of COMING features in 2023x FD01 and 2023xFD02. Please stay tuned.