Tips & Tricks

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.
Harald Porzner Welding & Assembly

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.
Casting, Welding & Assembly

Boundary layer meshing with CFD-ACE+ [video format]
The accuracy of a CFD solution is strongly dependent on how well the mesh resolves geometry and flow features. This is especially true for near wall regions (boundary layer) where viscous forces are not negligible compared to inertial forces.
Abraham Meganathan CFD

How to check what software version you are running
There is a very fast and easy way to verify what software version you are running for your ESI CFD applications. You most likely know that this information is available for the GUI by clicking on 'Help → About ...', and for solvers by looking in the output file.
Abraham Meganathan CFD

Always Make Sure You Have a Good Mesh Quality
The mesh has a great influence on the solver convergence and solution of every CFD Simulation. The user is strongly advised to check the quality of a numerical mesh.
Abraham Meganathan CFD

Copy/Paste Viewpoint tools
Usually, when performing a particular simulation, it is necessary to compare the results of similar models or the same model at different operating conditions. It is important that the two (or more) cases being compared be viewed from the same angle and at the same zoom level.
Abraham Meganathan CFD

Using "Visual Scaling" for Models with Drastically Varying Length Scales
For models that have drastically varying length scales, it can be difficult to create the grid, setup a model, and post-process the results. CFD-GEOM, CFD-ACE-GUI and CFD-VIEW have a "Visual Scale" capability that can significantly help when working with these types of models.
Abraham Meganathan CFD

Parametric Studies Using SimManager
Parametric studies are an important aspect of CFD analysis. Parametric studies are used to perform trend base analyses, optimize the deign of a device, and/or to study the affect of different parameters on a process (What if? type analysis).
Abraham Meganathan CFD

How to Compare the Model Setup Between Two DTF Files
Have you ever wanted to find the differences between two DTF files? If you have, then you will probably be interested in a DTF utility included in your ESI Software installation. The utility is called dtf_diff and can be found in your UTILS_2009.0/bin directory.
Abraham Meganathan CFD

CFD-ACE+ and CFD-TOPO Coupling
There is a growing demand and challenge in different industries, especially semiconductor and MEMS areas, to have increased wafer size with reduced feature size, i.e. high quality process uniformity.
Abraham Meganathan CFD