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.

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.

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.

CFD-FASTRAN/CFD-ACE+ coupling for thermal environment simulations

In certain applications, different regions of the computational domain experiences flow conditions that are so different that it is very difficult for a single solver to produce accurate results at the extremes. In many situations, such problems can be separated and solved using loosely coupled solvers. Each solver is chosen to provide highly accurate solutions for the prevailing flow conditions.

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.

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.

Avoiding Chimera Errors in CFD-FASTRAN

This note discusses a common error encountered by users when trying chimera meshes in CFD-FASTRAN. Such errors are easy to avoid and hopefully this note will assist you.

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.

Motion Model Dependencies in CFD-FASTRAN

Moving-body models available in CFD-FASTRAN are highly suited to simulate complex prescribed and six-degree-of-freedom (6DOF) motions of rigid bodies. In many engineering problems, this translates to multiple bodies moving relative to one another.

Low Mach Preconditioning and Dual Time Stepping in CFD-FASTRAN

Density-based schemes employing time-marching procedures available in CFD-FASTRAN provide excellent stability and convergence characteristics for high-speed compressible flows (typically M >0.5).