Term report

Comprehensive study of CFD commercial codes .

SUBJECT:
Computational fluid dynamics( CFD)
SUBMITTIED TO:
Engr KANWAR SALEEM
SUBMITTED BY:
Hassan Mumtaz 2k14-che -135
Zia-ur-rehman 2k14-che -124
Fahad Muneeb 2k14-che -123
Moiz Razvi 2k14-che -117
SECTION :
DATE: 2 -May-2017

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

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 O MY LORD!
INCREASE IN MY KNOWLEDGE.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:-
Any accomplishment requires the
effort of many people and there are no exceptions. The report being
submitted today is a result of collective effort. Although the report has
been solely prepared by me with the purpose of fulfilling the
requirements of the course there are in numerous helping hands behind it
who have guided me on my way. First I thank my Head of department
“Sir sadiqu hussain” for creating such an opportunity for the students
to broaden their frame of skills. We are gratified with their efforts. Our
sincere gratitude & thanks goes to our subject teacher “Engr. Kanwar
saleem” who helped us to prepare this report.

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 Table Of Content

Page no.

Introduction: 3

CFD Commercial codes: 3

 FLUENT 5
 AEA technology(Atomic Energy Authority) 5
 STAR-C D 7
 CHAM 9
 AMI 10
 ICEM-CFD 11
 KIVA 12
 CEI 13
 CPFD 13
 ANSYS 13

Comparison: 14
References: 16

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Computational fluid dynamics( CFD)
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical
analysis and data structures to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Computers
are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with
surfaces defined by boundary conditions. With high-speed supercomputers, better solutions can
be achieved. Ongoing research yields software that improves the accuracy and speed of complex
simulation scenarios such as transonic or turbulent flows. Initial experimental validation of such
software is performed using a wind tunnel with the final validation coming in full-scale testing,
e.g. flight tests.

CFD COMMERICAL CODES

Even though I make my living developing non-commercial CFD codes and helping people use
them, it must be said that commercial packages are a good solution for many organizations. So
before we dive into the discussion of the various non-commercial CFD solvers, we need to make
a quick side trip to the world of commercial software.

If you are looking at commercial CFD packages, evaluate the different alternatives carefully to
be sure you're getting the right solution for your organization. There are many reputable
companies that offer different CFD packages which cover the whole spectrum from highly
customized expert systems, to stand-alone solvers, to all-in-one packages that attempt to provide
everything you need to do CFD at your company. Follow the link for a short discussion of just a
few of them.

There are following.

 FLUENT
 AEA technology
 CHAM
 STAR-CD
 AMI
 ICEM-CFD
 CEI
 CPFD
 KIVA
 ANSYS

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 1) FLUENT
Fluent launched the first salvo in consolidating the CFD industry in 1996 by, ironically, being
acquired itself by a little known heat sink producer called Aavid Thermal Technologies, then
listed on the NASDAQ as AATT. At the time of their acquisition, FDI were in the process of
developing FIDAP 8, a new integrated pre-processor, solver and visualization package that went
on to become GAMBIT. GAMBIT replaced ICEM CFD's GEOMESH, which Fluent had been
licensing as its pre-processor for geometry preparation and meshing.

2) AEA technology
The UK's Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) privatized a portion of itself in 1996 as AEA
Technology which contained their CFD business (FLOW3D later renamed to CFX) within its
Engineering Software Business unit.

AEA Technology Engineering Software has announced major enhancements to its

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling capability for process and chemical engineers,
with the release of CFX-4.4. The software allows the highly complex fluid dynamic, heat
transfer and chemical processes that occur in mixing vessels to be predicted accurately and
efficiently.

CFX-4, fluid engineering software, is already established as the leading CFD software in the
chemical and process industries for complex multiphase calculations. Version CFX-4.4
incorporates new features offering major benefits to the user.

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  Velocity vector for the simulation using frozen rotor

About AEA Technology Engineering Software AEA Technology is a leading engineering

software and consulting company. We develop and license the CFX software for fluid flow
analysis, and offer consulting services, perform application projects and participate in
development and research projects funded by either industrial clients or public institutions. We
give our customers a competitive edge by helping them adapt and exploit technology so they can
optimise plant and processes, enhance products, meet safety requirements and manage
environmental challenges. CFX is a CAD-oriented Computational Fluid Dynamics tool for fluid
flow analysis and design optimisation. The CFX software is well known for its excellent
performance on parallel computer platforms running on Unix, NT and Linux. Built into CFX are
some very powerful tools and efficient features, such as native CAD interfaces to read
geometries directly from CAD systems without loss of information, a generalised grid interface
to connect completely dissimilar, non-matching grids, regardless of how they were created, and
multiple frames of reference to efficiently model flows with rotor/stator interactions. CFX has a
unique coupled, algebraic multi-grid solver that provides best-in-class robustness and reliability.
It includes facilities such as radiation modelling, advanced models for chemical reactions and
multiphase flows, reacting particle tracking, fire simulation and special fluid analyses for wet
steam and refrigerants. CFX clients are supported globally by more than 170 qualified and
experienced staff members.

AEA Technology Engineering Software is a division of AEA Technology plc, a major

international science and engineering company with BS EN ISO9001. AEA Technology delivers
innovative technical, safety and environmental solutions to the aerospace, automotive, energy,
mechanical, rotating machinery, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, agrochemical, speciality chemical
and fine chemical industries worldwide. AEA Technology employs 4,490 people around the
world. More than 2,000 of these employees are graduate scientists or technically qualified
individuals. AEA Technology brings science to the marketplace through consultancy, technical
services, hardware and software systems, research and development and technology transfer.
AEA Technology Engineering Software Inc.past five years, computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
has fought for its place as an essential tool for chemical process engineers. The programs, which
calculate fluid flow and heat transfer, have become much easier to use, and visualization tools
have made the results simpler to interpret.
CFX-4
The new release of CFX-4 features two new physical models, MUSIG and PFDReaction, tools
that enhance understanding of reactions in dispersions.

PFD Reaction.

CFX-4's second major improvement is the use of PFD Reaction to superimpose process
chemistry on CFD calculations of fluid flow patterns. The program calculates chemical reaction
rates in fluid systems. Several large chemical companies already use the code in conjunction
with CFD software. PFD Reaction is used to scale up processes, select reactors, and improve
yield in polymerization, pharmaceutical precipitation, and competitive reactions. PFD Reaction
also has powerful combustion modeling capabilities, including NOx formation.

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The system also provides an expert mode. This uses the CFX- Pro Mixus user interface as an
input for the more sophisticated capabilities of CFX-4. This provides process and chemical
engineers with CFD background a more in-depth understand reactor mixing issues.

3) Star CD
STAR-CD offers a range of moving mesh features, including:
• General mesh motion
• Internal sliding mesh
• Cell deletion and insertion
The first of these is straight forward to employ and the only caution required is the obvious one:
avoid creating excessive distortion when redistributing the mesh. This caution also applies to the
use of the other two features, but they have additional rules and guidelines attached to them.
Flow characterisation and material property definition
Correct definition of the physical flow conditions and the properties of the materials involved is
a prerequisite to obtaining the right solution to a problem, or indeed to obtaining any solution at
all. It is also essential for determining whether the problem an be modelled with STAR-CD. The
user must therefore ensure that the problem is well defined in respect of:
• The nature of the flow (e.g. steady/unsteady, laminar/turbulent,
incompressible/compressible).
• Thermophysical properties (e.g. density, viscosity, specific heat).
• External force fields (e.g. gravity, centrifugal forces) and energy sources,
when present.
• Initial conditions for transient flows.
 Nature of the flow
It is very important to understand the nature of the flow being analysed in order to select the
appropriate mathematical models and numerical solution algorithms.Problems will arise if an
incorrect choice is made, as in the following examples:
• Employing an iterative, steady-state algorithm for an inherently unsteady
problem, such as vortex shedding from a bluff body.
• Computing a turbulent flow without invoking a suitable turbulence model.
• Modelling transitional flow with one of the turbulence models currently
implemented in STAR-CD. None of them can represent transitional behaviour
accurately.

 Thermophysical properties
The specification of thermophysical properties, such as density, molecular viscosity, thermal
conductivity, etc. depends on the nature of the fluids or solids involved and the circumstances of
use. For example, STAR-CD contains several built-in equations of state from which density can
be calculated as a function of one or more of the following field variables:
 Pressure
 Temperature
 Fluid composition
 In all cases where complex calculations are used to evaluate a material property, the
 following measures are recommended:

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  The relevant field variables must be assigned plausible initial and boundary
 values.
 Where necessary, properties should be solved for together with the field
 variables as part of the overall solution.
 In the case of strong dependencies between properties and field variables, the
 user should consider under-relaxation of the property value calculations, in
 the manner described in the Methodology volume (Chapter 7, “Scalar
 transport equations”).
 When required, STAR-CD’s facility for alternative, user-programmable
 functions may be used.

 Force fields and energy sources

As already noted, STAR-CD has built-in provision for body forces arising from
 buoyancy,
 rotation.
It is important to remember that as the strength of the body forces increases relative to the
viscous (or turbulent) stresses, the flow may become physically unstable. In these circumstances
it is advisable to switch to the transient solution mode. It is also possible to insert additional,
external force fields and energy sources via the user programming facilities of STAR-CD. In
such cases, it is important to understand the physical implications and avoid specifying
conditions that lead to
physical or numerical instability. Examples of such conditions are:
• Thermal energy sources that increase linearly with temperature. These can
give rise to physical instability called ‘thermal runaway’.
• Setting the coefficient in the permeability function to a
very small or zero value. If the local fluid velocity also becomes very small,
the result may be numerical instability whereby small pressure perturbations
produce a large change in velocities.
 Initial conditions
The term ‘initial conditions’ refers to values assigned to the dependent variables at all mesh
points before the start of the calculations. Their implication depends on thetype of problem being
considered:
• Inunsteady flow applications, this information has a clear physical significance and will affect
the course of the solution. Due care must therefore be taken in providing it. It sometimes happens
that the effects of initial conditions are confined to a start-up phase that is not of interest (as in,
for example, flows that are temporally periodic). However, it is still advisable to
take some precautions in specifying initial conditions for reasons explained
below.
• In calculating steady flow by iterative means, the initial conditions will usually have no
influence on the final solution (apart from rare occasions when the solution is multi-valued) but
may well determine the success and speed of achieving it. Poor initial field specifications or, for
transient problems, abrupt changes in boundary conditions put severe demands on the numerical
algorithm when substituted into the finite-volume equations. As a consequence, the following
special ‘start-up’ measures may be necessary to ensure numerical stability:
• Use of unusually small time steps in transient calculations.
• Use of strong under-relaxation in iterative solutions.

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For steady-state and pseudo-transient calculations, the code has a built-in initialisation procedure
that is applied over and above any user-specified initialisation of flow variables.Most problems
can be started up by relying entirely on this procedure. However, attention should still be paid to
the specified values for characteristic length and maximum expected velocity in the flow field as
these are important for initialisation. The user is advised to run his problem for zero iterations
and then examine the initial velocity and pressure fields predicted by STAR. Some fine tuning of
the characteristic length value may then be necessary. In especially difficult cases, the pressure
initialisation or even the entire initialisation process may have to be omitted by using appropriate
solution-control switches. The user should then rely on strong under-relaxation or very small
time steps to start up the solution.
Using STAR-Launch
STAR-Launch is a graphical interface that provides access to most of the CD adapco modelling
tools, including pro-STAR, several es-tools and the STAR solver. Using STAR-Launch
eliminates the need to enter multiple script names manually, as described in the previous section,
and also ensures settings can be saved between sessions and between cases. STAR-Launch is
intended to be used with only one case at a time. There is, however, no limit on the number of
STAR-Launch windows. partner for CFD code qualification is ANSYS CFX ,which is one of the
leading CFD codes worldwide. Based on this partnership the models developed are implemented
into the code and thus contribute to the code qualification. In principle the presented simulation
could be performed by any other actual CFD-code. The following topical issues, where CFD
calculations have been performed, will be briefly discussed in the paper:
(1)coolant mixing,
(2)corizontal stratified flow phenomena in the Hot Leg of PWR,
(3)Debris transport phenomena in multidimensional water flow,
(4)sub-cooled boiling Application to fuel rod bundle safety assessment.

4) AMI
AMI was incorporated in 1971 to conduct research and development in aerodynamics and
hydrodynamics for government and industry. Since then AMI has developed a series of robust
CFD codes that can be applied to a wide range of practical problems. AMI also markets and
provides technical support for some CFD codes written by others under cooperative agreements
with the original authors. Some of the codes available from AMI include:
 VSAERO:
A full configuration, subsonic aeroynamics analysis method that solves the linearized potential
flow equations. VSAERO uses piecewise constant singularity strengths on surface panels to
represent arbitrary three-dimensional configurations. Boundary layer calculations can be
performed along on-body streamlines and the resulting boundary layer thicknesses can be used to
iteratively correct the inviscid flowfield (using surface transpiration). Compressibility corrections
are available within the program for higher subsonic Mach number cases. Wake geometry is
determined by an iterative wake shape calculation procedure. Special purpose modules such as;
FSWAVE, ROTOR and PROPFAN expand VSAERO's capabilities. These modules calculate
the nonlinear hydrodynamic wave effects on surface piercing vessels, helicopter rotor/fuselage
interactions and propeller/fan performance, respectively.

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 FSWAVE:
A free-surface module developed for VSAERO which uses desingularized source panels raised
above the free water surface combined with normal VSAERO (source and dipole) panels on the
ship hull surface to predict the steady flow past submerged or floating vehicles. Provisions are
made for predicting the change in the draft and trim of a ship resulting from its forward speed, to
model the flow past a transom stern, to model the flow past a shiptraveling in shallow water, and
to model the flow past lifting surfaces near a free surface. The program satisfies the nonlinear
boundary condition on the free water surface. This is done in an iterative manner, where during
each iteration the linearized solution about the flow resulting from the previous iteration is
computed using an approach similar to that originally developed by Dawson. The first iteration
solves for the flow linearized about the free stream flow.

 USAERO:
This program calculates the transient aerodynamic characteristics of complex configurations in
arbitrary motion.It is based on a time-stepping procedure which allows relative motions of
configuration components. USAERO simulations include manuevering aircraft, gust response,
rotor/body interactions and stores separation from aircraft. Special application modules FPI and
FSP couple with USAERO to provide flight-path integration calculations with six degrees of
freedom and ship motion calculations with nonlinear free-surface simulation.

 ICE:
This code calculates particle trajectories in the vicinity of an arbitrary aircraft for use in icing and
sand-ingestion analyses. The efficient trajectory calculation and prescribed velocity field result
in a very fast calculation. ICE reads the aircraft geometry and flowfield velocity from an
OMNI3D graphics file.

 INCA:
A compressible Navier-Stokes flow solver with turbulence and chemistry modelling options. An
advanced solution procedure is used to solve the equations on multi-block, body-fitted, finite-
volume computational grids. Subsonic, transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic viscous flows can
be calculated forcomplex geometries.

5) ICEM CFD
ICEM CFD is a computational grid generation system developed by ICEM Technologies,
GmbH, and ICEM CFD Engineering of Berkeley, CA. It is sold and supported in the United
states and Canada by ICEM CFD Engineering.

ICEM CFD can generate high-quality computational grids for CFD and other applications, based
on either NURBS surfaces from CAD systems or existing surface meshes. It includes modules
for generating:

 Multi-block structured grids

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  Unstructured hexahedral grids
 Unstructured tetrahedral and triangular surface grids
 Unstructured quad grids
 Body-fitted Cartesian grids
 Refined H-grids

It can create grid input for a wide variety of flow solvers and other simulation codes.

 Icepak
Icepak is an object-oriented thermal analysis system for electronic components. It was developed
by ICEM CFD Engineering of Berkeley, CA, and Fluid Dynamics International of Evanston, Il.

Icepak includes an object-based modeling system, which allows users to rapidly create complex
models with pre-defined component types, a fully automatic hexahedral grid generator that
creates body-fitted high-quality grids, the Fidap flow solver, and extensive post-processing
capabilities.

 ANSYS ICEM

ANSYS ICEM CFD is a popular proprietary software package used for CAD and mesh
generation. Some open source software includes Open FOAM, Feat Flow, Open FVM etc.
Present discussion is applicable to ANSYS ICEM CFD software.
It can create structured, unstructured, multi-block, and hybrid grids with different cell
geometries.

Geometry Modeling.
ANSYS ICEM CFD is meant to mesh a geometry already created using other dedicated CAD
packages. Therefore, the geometry modelling features are primarily meant to 'clean-up' an
imported CAD model. Nevertheless, there are some very powerful geometry creation, editing
and repair (manual and automated) tools available in ANSYS ICEM CFD which assist in
arriving at the meshing stage quickly. Unlike the concept of volume in tools like GAMBIT,
ICEM CFD rather treats a collection of surfaces which encompass a closed region as BODY.
Therefore, the typical topological issues encountered in GAMBIT (e.g. face cannot be deleted
since it is referenced by higher topology) don't show up here. The emphasis in ICEM CFD to
create a mesh is to have a 'water-tight' geometry. It means if there is a source of water inside a
region, the water should be contained and not leak out of the BODY.
Apart from the regular points, curves, surface creation and editing tools, ANSYS ICEM CFD
especially has the capability to do BUILD TOPOLOGY which removes unwanted surfaces and
then you can view if there are any 'holes' in the region of interest for meshing. Existence of holes
would mean that the algorithm which generates the mesh would cause the mesh to 'leak out' of
the domain. Holes are typically identified through the colour of the curves. The following is the
colour coding in ANSYS ICEM CFD, after the BUILD TOPOLOGY option has been
implemented:

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 YELLOW: curve attached to a single surface - possibly a hole exists. In some cases this
might be desirable for e.g., thin internal walls require at least one curve with single surface
attached to it.
 RED: curve shared by two surface - the usual case.
 BLUE: curve shared by more than two surface.
 Green: Unattached Curves - not attached to any surface

Structured meshing strategy

While simple ducts can be modelled using a single block, majority of the geometries encountered
in real life have to be modelled using multi-block strategies if at all it is possible.
The following are the different multi-block strategies available which can be implemented using
ANSYS ICEM CFD.

 O-grid
 C-grid
 Quarter O-grid
 H-grid

Unstructured meshing strategy

Unlike the structured approach for meshing, the unstructured meshing algorithm is more or less
an optimization problem, wherein, it is required to fill-in a given space (with curvilinear
boundaries) with standard shapes (e.g., triangle, quadrilaterals - 2D; tetrahedrals, hexahedrals,
polyhedrals, prisms, pyramids - 3D) which have constraints on their size. The basic algorithms
employed for doing unstructured meshing are:

 Octree (easiest from the user's perspective; robust but least control over the final cell count
which is usually the highest)
 Delaunay (better control over the final cell count but may have sudden jumps in the size of
the elements)
 Advancing front (performs very smooth transition of the element sizes and may result in
quite accurate but high cell count).

6) KIVA
There is a code "KIVA" that BP uses for such explosive environments a nternal combustion
engine cylinders. In that it can handle chemical transformations, it may be suitable.
In that BP has reorganized and eliminated its US Research, I can't give you the name of any
competent staff at their Sunbury-on-Thames Research Centre in the UK. You might try to
contact Dr. Wendell Mills, Engineering Computing Inc., who occupies space at BP's former
Warrensville Research Center in Cleveland. Call the central BP number in Cleveland. Can't
help much, as they've changed the phone numbers recently (and probably the locks, too!).

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 7) CEI
Since 1999, CEI’s product line has grown from one package for CAE post-processing, EnSight
(Standard) to several derived versions, including EnSight Gold, EnSight DR, EnSight Desktop
and EnSight Free. CEI now offers an entire range of versions for visualization needs, from a free
version to one supporting the most advanced Virtual Reality displays.

8) CPFD
CPFD Software is the leading-edge CAE software technology provider for simulation of
complex reacting particulate-solid and fluid flow phenomena with its flagship product,
Barracuda Virtual Reactor. Across diverse commercial markets including crude oil refining,
chemical reactors, CFB power plants and gasifiers, Barracuda VR accelerates the design and
development of fluidization processes thereby increasing their productivity through virtual
chemical reaction simulations.

CFD-ACE
Advanced General Purpose CFD Code

CFD-FASTRAN
High Accuracy Compressible Flow Solver on Unstructure Structured, Hybrid
Grids

CFD-TWOPHASE
Advanced multi-phase CFD solver

CFD-GEOM
Interactive 3D Geometry/Grid Generation Software

CFD-VIEW
Interactive 3D Graphics, Animation and Flow Visualization
Software.

10) ANSYS
ANSYS is the leading supplier of analysis tools within the Computer-Aided Engineering
(CAE) field. However, it was only in 2003 that ANSYS could finally field a strong CFD analysis
tool after it purchased the CFX division of AEA Technology. As a precursor to its CFD
purchase, ANSYS purchased ICEM CFD in 2000. ICEM CFD was a specialist in providing
advanced meshing tools (such as Hexa and Tetra) for CFD and FEA analysis - recall they also
used to supply Fluent with GEOMESH prior to GAMBIT. The prolific lead developer at ICEM
CFD was Wayne Christopher, who was also responsible for the meshing and user interface in
Icepak, owned by Fluent after their purchase of FDI.

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 Not content with having one of the leading CFD vendors, ANSYS purchased Fluent (the world's
leading CFD vendor) from WSP in 2006 for US$630 million - a handsome payback compared to
the original purchase price of US$260 million WSP paid for Aavid and Fluent combined.
ANSYS is now a CFD superpower and had to obtain FTC clearance for the Fluent purchase after
concerns were raised about it forming a CFD software market monopoly.

Sources:

 AEA Technology News

 Mergers and Aquisitions
 ANSYS completes Fluent purchase
 Unofficial History of ANSYS

Comparison between FLUENT and CFX

Fluent is a cell-centered code.
It takes a little tuning to get Fluent to
converge.
Their solvers have many different models.
Flow solver robustness is questionable on
complex models (combustion, multiphase,
etc..)
Fluent UDF's are very well documented,
archived and very flexible. A big
advantage.
CFX is cell-vertex finite volume. To
implement boundary condition better and
to avoid corner singularity better, CVFV is
preferable, at the cost of slight higher CPU
time.
Robustness for steady problems is better in
CFX
The solver is very robust. It is easy to make
complex models to work.
CFX has an easy to use CFX command
language to do simple things. Otherwise
CFX Command Languauge is not well
documented.

Few other functional advantages of CFX are as follows:

 An automatic meshing feature is included in the current CFX software, the CFX
MESH. The solver uses an unstructured tetrahedral mesh, for which the user only specifies the
geometry and surface grid. The solver then automatically performs the volume meshing, using a
very fast Delaunay algorithm. This greatly speeds pre-processing and produces high-quality
meshes that in turn ensure faster convergence.
 CFX increases meshing flexibility even further by allowing mixed element types
etrahedrons, hexahedrons, pyramids and wedges—to be used at the same time.

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Considerable controversy has revolved around the use of tetrahedral elements in CFD
software. The main arguments in their favor are that the meshgeneration procedure can
be automated and that high-quality meshes are easier to obtain when refining the grid
locally to resolve features of interest. On the down side, tetrahedrons may be less
accurate than a corresponding hexahedral mesh,

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 References:
.


Evaluation of CFD codes by comparison of numerical predictions ofan air-conditioned
room case study. Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253486938_Evaluation_of_CFD_codes_by_
comparison_of_numerical_predictions_ofan_air-conditioned_room_case_study
[accessed Apr 26, 2017].

 Alamdari, F., Applications of CFD in the Built

Environment, FLOVENT User Meeting, May,
1994.(http://www.flovent.com/technical_papers)
Bartak, M., Beausoleil-Morrison, I., Clarke, J.A.,
, J., Drkal, F., Lain, M., MacDonald, I.A.,
 www.slide shear.com

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