Tips & Tricks

New Mesh Sources in CFD-GEOM for Triangle and Tetrahedral meshing

Corner Point Sources, Surface Interior Sources and Tet Sources have been available in CFD-GEOM for several years, allowing for refinements during certain phases of mesh generation.

Weld Fatigue analysis based on the Dang Van Criteria

Numerical modeling of fatigue behavior has become critical for welding applications. For this purpose the ‘Dang Van criterion’ has been integrated in SYSWELD for fatigue evaluation of welded structure under multi-axial loadings. The Dang Van fatigue damage criterion is used to predict crack initiation and life duration of components subjected to damaging load. This criterion is based on multi-scale approach which assumes that shakedown occurs before crack initiation.

Materials in the database - Which material properties to use with respect to the three methods to simulate the heat effects of welding

A material is described with exactly one set of material properties. In simulation engineering - depending on the applied method and the moment in time when the simulation is carried out in the product development cycle - only subsets of a full material data set might be required. In this article is outlined which subset is used for which purpose, what is available in the database, and what can be simulated.

The challenge of simulating casting and heat treatment

Foundries that have implemented casting simulation to shorten development time, further wish to use simulation in order to reduce the cost of subsequent processing steps. This often requires the simulation of heat treatment.

Working with Solids in CFD-GEOM - Part 1: Boolean Operations

Given that today’s users may import several complex parts into CFD-GEOM, this tip will demonstrate how to use the Solid Boolean Union Option to combine several parts into one.

Using the BC/VC Queries tool in CFD-GEOM

Have you ever whished that you could blank/unblank or pick/unpick only interfaces in a CFD-GEOM model? You can now with the BC/VC Queries tool. This tool allows you to pick, unpick, blank or unblank all the interfaces of the current model based on the interface type (Fluid/Fluid, Fluid/Solid, etc.).

How to create Pyramid cells on structured-unstructured domain interfaces in CFD-GEOM

CFD-GEOM can be used to construct a variety of cell shapes: quadrilaterals (2D) and hexahedrals (3D) for structured meshes; triangles (2D) as well as tetrahedrals and polyhedral/honeycomb (3D) for unstructured meshes; prisms and pyramids (3D) for semi-structured meshes.

New Exposed Boundaries Visualization tool in CFD-GEOM

One of the various new features introduced in CFD-GEOM V2009.2 is the ‘Exposed Boundaries’ visualization tool. This tool allows users to quickly visualize those areas where closure problems remain in an otherwise closed and “watertight” model.

Repairing Imported CAD Geometries in CFD-GEOM

In most cases, importing CAD files in CFD-GEOM results in a clean geometry that can be directly used for further processing and/or meshing. However, for complex models, it is possible that the imported geometry has missing, untrimmed or defective surfaces that need to be manually repaired.

Butterfly Faces Meshing Tool in CFD-GEOM

In CFD-GEOM, a convenient meshing tool called "Butterfly Faces" allows the user to quickly and automatically create a structured mesh for circular topologies. The resulting mesh consists of 5 structured faces (4 sides and 1 core) inside a circle. Parameters are available to set the size of the core and the mesh density.