Welcome to another adventure in curated CFD news, curated being a fancy word for “whatever I find interesting.” Lots of hypersonics this week, lots of built environment applications this week, and a couple of cool animations. And toward the end … Continue reading →

The post This Week in CFD first appeared on Another Fine Mesh.

This week’s compilation of CFD news begins with a must-read article on how to choose colors properly when visualizing data. AI comes up twice this week as does Fortran which makes one wonder whether anyone’s programming AI in Fortran. There’s … Continue reading →

The post This Week in CFD first appeared on Another Fine Mesh.

This Week in CFD reached convergence long before I had exhausted the two-week backlog of news. With baseball season underway here in the US, fans will enjoy the case study describing how high-fidelity CFD can predict the trajectory of various … Continue reading →

The post This Week in CFD first appeared on Another Fine Mesh.

It’s a good Friday for the latest roundup of CFD flotsam and jetsam from the ocean that is the internet. [Making this the Great CFD Garbage Gyre?] We use the marine theme because, for unexplained reasons, there are a lot … Continue reading →

The post This Week in CFD first appeared on Another Fine Mesh.

All things being equal, CFD practitioners prefer to use hexahedral mesh cells in the boundary layer for the improved robustness and accuracy they bring to the flow solver. Traditionally, a hex grid would be created using a structured grid technique … Continue reading →

The post Resolving Boundary Layers with Unstructured Quad and Hex Meshing: On-Demand Webinar first appeared on Another Fine Mesh.

Completely fungible and non-tokenized, today’s CFD news begins with a hopeful glimpse at a potential in-person CFD event. You should check-out the list of tips for simulation projects and let us know what was missed. And the coolest news this … Continue reading →

The post This Week in CFD first appeared on Another Fine Mesh.

Metallic paint flows like silver lava in this macro video from Chemical Bouillon. The paint has been mixed with an unknown fluid (my guess is alcohol) to produce the flows we see here. My suspicion is that we’re seeing solutal convection where variations in surface tension create convective flow within the liquid. What do you think? (Video and image credit: Chemical Bouillon)

Bubbles in industrial applications are often more complicated than a simple pocket of air surrounded by water. Here researchers investigate the formation of an air bubble coated in oil before it rises through water. The photo above shows a series of snapshots as the bubble forms. Initially, a droplet of oil sits pinned on the surface. As air gets injected, the oil stretches around the growing bubble. Eventually, buoyancy pulls the bubble off the injector, creating a rising air bubble coated in oil. The team found that oil-coated bubbles could grow much larger than those in water alone. (Image and research credit: B. Ji et al.)

When bodies of water meet, they don’t always mix right away. Here we see the confluence of the Back and Hayes Rivers in the Canadian Arctic. The Back River appears as a darker blue-green color compared to the light turquoise Hayes River. The different colors reflect the levels of algae and sediment carried in their waters. As seen in both the aerial and satellite photos here, there’s a distinct line where the two waters meet without mixing, and that line persists for kilometers beyond their initial confluence. Typically, this lack of mixing between bodies of water is caused by differences in temperature, salinity, and turbidity (amount of sediment) that make the density of each river’s water different. (Image credit: top – R. Macdonald/Univ. of Manitoba, bottom – J. Stevens/USGS; via NASA Earth Observatory)

Summer hikes in the Rocky Mountains are frequently pierced by a hum that can deepen to a bomber-like buzz as hummingbirds flit by. They’re so small and fast that they’re hard to see, but they’re never hard to hear. A new study pins down just where that telltale hum comes from.

To determine the specific origin of the hummingbird’s sound, researchers observed hovering hummingbirds with an array of over 2,000 microphones and multiple high-speed cameras. With this set-up, they could create a 3D acoustic map of the bird’s sounds, correlated with its motions. They found that the bird’s sounds come primarily from aerodynamic forces generated during their distinctive wingstroke – not from vortices or the fluttering of their feathers.

They also found that the hummingbird’s fast wingstroke — about 40 times per second — fed into sounds at 40 and 80 Hz, as well as higher frequency overtones. Since these sounds are well within human hearing range, they make up most of what we hear from the birds. (Image credit: P. Bonnar; research credit: B. Hightower; via The Guardian; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)

In the early days of submarines, it did not take physicists and engineers long to discover how destructive underwater explosions can be. In this Slow Mo Guys video, Gav gives us a glimpse of that destruction using a model submarine in a fish tank and several small explosives. You’ll have to be quick to notice the initial shock waves that ripple through the tank, but the footage captures spectacular detail on some of the slower-moving phenomena. You can see the uneven ripples of the explosion bubble’s surface as it expands. There are some great shots from the front and side showing the bubbly vortex ring that forms when the explosion hits the side of the tank wall (something that wouldn’t happen out in the ocean, of course). You can even catch a glimpse of some unexploded powder streaking out of the explosion. (Image and video credit: The Slow Mo Guys)

“Columbia” is a music video illustrated with fluid dynamics, chemistry, and biology by the Beauty of Science team. It’s got everything from precipitation to crystallization, from infrared imagery of wakes to timelapses of growing molds. How many phenomena can you identify? (Video and image credit: Beauty of Science)

There is an interesting new trend in using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Until recently CFD simulation was focused on existing and future things, think flying cars. Now we see CFD being applied to simulate fluid flow in the distant past, think fossils.

CFD shows Ediacaran dinner party featured plenty to eat and adequate sanitation

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Let's first address the elephant in the room - it's been a while since the last Caedium release. The multi-substance infrastructure for the Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) capability was a much larger effort than I anticipated and consumed a lot of resources. This lead to the relative quiet you may have noticed on our website. However, with the new foundation laid and solid we can look forward to a bright future.

Conjugate Heat Transfer Through a Water-Air Radiator
Simulation shows separate air and water streamline paths colored by temperature

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It turns out that Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has a key role to play in determining the behavior of long extinct creatures. In a previous, post we described a CFD study of parvancorina, and now Pernille Troelsen at Liverpool John Moore University is using CFD for insights into how long-necked plesiosaurs might have swum and hunted.

CFD Water Flow Simulation over an Idealized Plesiosaur: Streamline VectorsIllustration only, not part of the study

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Fossilized imprints of Parvancorina from over 500 million years ago have puzzled paleontologists for decades. What makes it difficult to infer their behavior is that Parvancorina have none of the familiar features we might expect of animals, e.g., limbs, mouth. In an attempt to shed some light on how Parvancorina might have interacted with their environment researchers have enlisted the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

CFD Water Flow Simulation over a Parvancorina: Forward directionIllustration only, not part of the study

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One of nature's smallest aerodynamic specialists - insects - have provided a clue to more efficient and robust wind turbine design.

Dragonfly: Yellow-winged DarterLicense: CC BY-SA 2.5, André Karwath

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The recent attempt to break the 2 hour marathon came very close at 2:00:24, with various aids that would be deemed illegal under current IAAF rules. The bold and obvious aerodynamic aid appeared to be a Tesla fitted with an oversized digital clock leading the runners by a few meters.

2 Hour Marathon Attempt

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In this post, I’ll give a simple example of how to create curves in blockMesh. For this example, we’ll look at the following basic setup:

As you can see, we’ll be simulating the flow over a bump defined by the curve:

First, let’s look at the basic blockMeshDict for this blocking layout WITHOUT any curves defined:

/*--------------------------------*- C++ -*----------------------------------*\
  =========                 |
  \\      /  F ield         | OpenFOAM: The Open Source CFD Toolbox
   \\    /   O peration     | Website:  https://openfoam.org
    \\  /    A nd           | Version:  6
     \\/     M anipulation  |
\*---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
FoamFile
{
    version     2.0;
    format      ascii;
    class       dictionary;
    object      blockMeshDict;
}

// * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * //

convertToMeters 1;

vertices
(
    (-1 0 0)    // 0
    (0 0 0)     // 1
    (1 0 0)     // 2
    (2 0 0)     // 3
    (-1 2 0)    // 4
    (0 2 0)     // 5
    (1 2 0)     // 6
    (2 2 0)     // 7

    (-1 0 1)    // 8    
    (0 0 1)     // 9
    (1 0 1)     // 10
    (2 0 1)     // 11
    (-1 2 1)    // 12
    (0 2 1)     // 13
    (1 2 1)     // 14
    (2 2 1)     // 15
);

blocks
(
    hex (0 1 5 4 8 9 13 12) (20 100 1) simpleGrading (0.1 10 1)
    hex (1 2 6 5 9 10 14 13) (80 100 1) simpleGrading (1 10 1)
    hex (2 3 7 6 10 11 15 14) (20 100 1) simpleGrading (10 10 1)
);

edges
(
);

boundary
(
    inlet
    {
        type patch;
        faces
        (
            (0 8 12 4)
        );
    }
    outlet
    {
        type patch;
        faces
        (
            (3 7 15 11)
        );
    }
    lowerWall
    {
        type wall;
        faces
        (
            (0 1 9 8)
            (1 2 10 9)
            (2 3 11 10)
        );
    }
    upperWall
    {
        type patch;
        faces
        (
            (4 12 13 5)
            (5 13 14 6)
            (6 14 15 7)
        );
    }
    frontAndBack
    {
        type empty;
        faces
        (
            (8 9 13 12)
            (9 10 14 13)
            (10 11 15 14)
            (1 0 4 5)
            (2 1 5 6)
            (3 2 6 7)
        );
    }
);

// ************************************************************************* //

This blockMeshDict produces the following grid:

It is best practice in my opinion to first make your blockMesh without any edges. This lets you see if there are any major errors resulting from the block topology itself. From the results above, we can see we’re ready to move on!

So now we need to define the curve. In blockMesh, curves are added using the edges sub-dictionary. This is a simple sub dictionary that is just a list of interpolation points:

edges
(
        polyLine 1 2
        (
                (0	0       0)
                (0.1	0.0309016994    0)
                (0.2	0.0587785252    0)
                (0.3	0.0809016994    0)
                (0.4	0.0951056516    0)
                (0.5	0.1     0)
                (0.6	0.0951056516    0)
                (0.7	0.0809016994    0)
                (0.8	0.0587785252    0)
                (0.9	0.0309016994    0)
                (1	0       0)
        )

        polyLine 9 10
        (
                (0	0       1)
                (0.1	0.0309016994    1)
                (0.2	0.0587785252    1)
                (0.3	0.0809016994    1)
                (0.4	0.0951056516    1)
                (0.5	0.1     1)
                (0.6	0.0951056516    1)
                (0.7	0.0809016994    1)
                (0.8	0.0587785252    1)
                (0.9	0.0309016994    1)
                (1	0       1)
        )
);

The sub-dictionary above is just a list of points on the curve . The interpolation method is polyLine (straight lines between interpolation points). An alternative interpolation method could be spline.

The following mesh is produced:

Hopefully this simple example will help some people looking to incorporate curved edges into their blockMeshing!

Cheers.

This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributor of the OpenFOAM software via http://www.openfoam.com, and owner of theOPENFOAM®  andOpenCFD®  trademarks.

Experimentally visualizing high-speed flow was a serious challenge for decades. Before the advent of modern laser diagnostics and velocimetry, the only real techniques for visualizing high speed flow fields were the optical techniques of Schlieren and Shadowgraph.

Today, Schlieren and Shadowgraph remain an extremely popular means to visualize high-speed flows. In particular, Schlieren and Shadowgraph allow us to visualize complex flow phenomena such as shockwaves, expansion waves, slip lines, and shear layers very effectively.

In CFD there are many reasons to recreate these types of images. First, they look awesome. Second, if you are doing a study comparing to experiments, occasionally the only full-field data you have could be experimental images in the form of Schlieren and Shadowgraph.

Without going into detail about Schlieren and Shadowgraph themselves, primarily you just need to understand that Schlieren and Shadowgraph represent visualizations of the first and second derivatives of the flow field refractive index (which is directly related to density).

In Schlieren, a knife-edge is used to selectively cut off light that has been refracted. As a result you get a visualization of the first derivative of the refractive index in the direction normal to the knife edge. So for example, if an experiment used a horizontal knife edge, you would see the vertical derivative of the refractive index, and hence the density.

For Shadowgraph, no knife edge is used, and the images are a visualization of the second derivative of the refractive index. Unlike the Schlieren images, shadowgraph has no direction and shows you the laplacian of the refractive index field (or density field).

In this post, I’ll use a simple case I did previously (https://curiosityfluids.com/2016/03/28/mach-1-5-flow-over-23-degree-wedge-rhocentralfoam/) as an example and produce some synthetic Schlieren and Shadowgraph images using the data.

So how do we create these images in paraview?

Well as you might expect, from the introduction, we simply do this by visualizing the gradients of the density field.

In ParaView the necessary tool for this is:

Gradient of Unstructured DataSet:

Once you’ve selected this, we then need to set the properties so that we are going to operate on the density field:

To do this, simply set the “Scalar Array” to the density field (rho), and change the name of the result Array name to SyntheticSchlieren. Now you should see something like this:

There are a few problems with the above image (1) Schlieren images are directional and this is a magnitude (2) Schlieren and Shadowgraph images are black and white. So if you really want your Schlieren images to look like the real thing, you should change to black and white. ALTHOUGH, Cold and Hot, Black-Body radiation, and Rainbow Desatured all look pretty amazing.

To fix these, you should only visualize one component of the Synthetic Schlieren array at a time, and you should visualize using the X-ray color preset:

The results look pretty realistic:

Horizontal Knife Edge

Vertical Knife Edge

Now how about ShadowGraph?

The process of computing the shadowgraph field is very similar. However, recall that shadowgraph visualizes the Laplacian of the density field. BUT THERE IS NO LAPLACIAN CALCULATOR IN PARAVIEW!?! Haha no big deal. Just remember the basic vector calculus identity:

Therefore, in order for us to get the Shadowgraph image, we just need to take the Divergence of the Synthetic Schlieren vector field!

To do this, we just have to use the Gradient of Unstructured DataSet tool again:

This time, Deselect “Compute Gradient” and the select “Compute Divergence” and change the Divergence array name to Shadowgraph.

Visualized in black and white, we get a very realistic looking synthetic Shadowgraph image:

Shadowgraph Image

So what do the values mean?

Now this is an important question, but a simple one to answer. And the answer is…. not much. Physically, we know exactly what these mean, these are: Schlieren is the gradient of the density field in one direction and Shadowgraph is the laplacian of the density field. But what you need to remember is that both Schlieren and Shadowgraph are qualitative images. The position of the knife edge, brightness of the light etc. all affect how a real experimental Schlieren or Shadowgraph image will look.

This means, very often, in order to get the synthetic Schlieren to closely match an experiment, you will likely have to change the scale of your synthetic images. In the end though, you can end up with extremely realistic and accurate synthetic Schlieren images.

Hopefully this post will be helpful to some of you out there. Cheers!

Sutherland’s equation is a useful model for the temperature dependence of the viscosity of gases. I give a few details about it in this post: https://curiosityfluids.com/2019/02/15/sutherlands-law/

The law given by:

It is also often simplified (as it is in OpenFOAM) to:

In order to use these equations, obviously, you need to know the coefficients. Here, I’m going to show you how you can simply create your own Sutherland coefficients using least-squares fitting Python 3.

So why would you do this? Basically, there are two main reasons for this. First, if you are not using air, the Sutherland coefficients can be hard to find. If you happen to find them, they can be hard to reference, and you may not know how accurate they are. So creating your own Sutherland coefficients makes a ton of sense from an academic point of view. In your thesis or paper, you can say that you created them yourself, and not only that you can give an exact number for the error in the temperature range you are investigating.

So let’s say we are looking for a viscosity model of Nitrogen N2 – and we can’t find the coefficients anywhere – or for the second reason above, you’ve decided its best to create your own.

By far the simplest way to achieve this is using Python and the Scipy.optimize package.

Step 1: Get Data

The first step is to find some well known, and easily cited, source for viscosity data. I usually use the NIST webbook (
https://webbook.nist.gov/), but occasionally the temperatures there aren’t high enough. So you could also pull the data out of a publication somewhere. Here I’ll use the following data from NIST:

This data is the dynamics viscosity of nitrogen N2 pulled from the NIST database for 0.101 MPa. (Note that in these ranges viscosity should be only temperature dependent).

Step 2: Use python to fit the data

If you are unfamiliar with Python, this may seem a little foreign to you, but python is extremely simple.

First, we need to load the necessary packages (here, we’ll load numpy, scipy.optimize, and matplotlib):

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit

Now we define the sutherland function:

def sutherland(T, As, Ts):
    return As*T**(3/2)/(Ts+T)

Next we input the data:

T=[200,
400,
600,
800,
1000,
1200,
1400,
1600,
1800,
2000]

mu=[0.000012924,
0.000022217,
0.000029602,
0.000035932,
0.000041597,
0.000046812,
0.000051704,
0.000056357,
0.000060829,
0.000065162]

Then we fit the data using the curve_fit function from scipy.optimize. This function uses a least squares minimization to solve for the unknown coefficients. The output variable popt is an array that contains our desired variables As and Ts.

popt = curve_fit(sutherland, T, mu)
As=popt[0]
Ts=popt[1]

Now we can just output our data to the screen and plot the results if we so wish:

print('As = '+str(popt[0])+'\n')
print('Ts = '+str(popt[1])+'\n')

xplot=np.linspace(200,2000,100)
yplot=sutherland(xplot,As,Ts)

plt.plot(T,mu,'ok',xplot,yplot,'-r')
plt.xlabel('Temperature (K)')
plt.ylabel('Dynamic Viscosity (Pa.s)')
plt.legend(['NIST Data', 'Sutherland'])
plt.show()

Overall the entire code looks like this:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit

def sutherland(T, As, Ts):
    return As*T**(3/2)/(Ts+T)

T=[200, 400, 600,
800,
1000,
1200,
1400,
1600,
1800,
2000]

mu=[0.000012924,
0.000022217,
0.000029602,
0.000035932,
0.000041597,
0.000046812,
0.000051704,
0.000056357,
0.000060829,
0.000065162]

popt, pcov = curve_fit(sutherland, T, mu)
As=popt[0]
Ts=popt[1]
print('As = '+str(popt[0])+'\n')
print('Ts = '+str(popt[1])+'\n')

xplot=np.linspace(200,2000,100)
yplot=sutherland(xplot,As,Ts)

plt.plot(T,mu,'ok',xplot,yplot,'-r')
plt.xlabel('Temperature (K)')
plt.ylabel('Dynamic Viscosity (Pa.s)')
plt.legend(['NIST Data', 'Sutherland'])
plt.show()

And the results for nitrogen gas in this range are As=1.55902E-6, and Ts=168.766 K. Now we have our own coefficients that we can quantify the error on and use in our academic research! Wahoo!

Summary

In this post, we looked at how we can simply use a database of viscosity-temperature data and use the python package scipy to solve for our unknown Sutherland viscosity coefficients. This NIST database was used to grab some data, and the data was then loaded into Python and curve-fit using scipy.optimize curve_fit function.

This task could also easily be accomplished using the Matlab curve-fitting toolbox, or perhaps in excel. However, I have not had good success using the excel solver to solve for unknown coefficients.

The most common complaint I hear, and the most common problem I observe with OpenFOAM is its supposed “steep learning curve”. I would argue however, that for those who want to practice CFD effectively, the learning curve is equally as steep as any other software.

There is a distinction that should be made between “user friendliness” and the learning curve required to do good CFD.

While I concede that other commercial programs have better basic user friendliness (a nice graphical interface, drop down menus, point and click options etc), it is equally as likely (if not more likely) that you will get bad results in those programs as with OpenFOAM. In fact, to some extent, the high user friendliness of commercial software can encourage a level of ignorance that can be dangerous. Additionally, once you are comfortable operating in the OpenFOAM world, the possibilities become endless and things like code modification, and bash and python scripting can make OpenFOAM worklows EXTREMELY efficient and powerful.

Anyway, here are a few tips to more easily tackle the OpenFOAM learning curve:

(1) Understand CFD

This may seem obvious… but its not to some. Troubleshooting bad simulation results or unstable simulations that crash is impossible if you don’t have at least a basic understanding of what is happening under the hood. My favorite books on CFD are:

(a) The Finite Volume Method in Computational Fluid Dynamics: An Advanced Introduction with OpenFOAM® and Matlab by
F. Moukalled, L. Mangani, and M. Darwish

(b) An introduction to computational fluid dynamics – the finite volume method – by H K Versteeg and W Malalasekera

(c) Computational fluid dynamics – the basics with applications – By John D. Anderson

(2) Understand fluid dynamics

Again, this may seem obvious and not very insightful. But if you are going to assess the quality of your results, and understand and appreciate the limitations of the various assumptions you are making – you need to understand fluid dynamics. In particular, you should familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of turbulence, and turbulence modeling.

(3) Avoid building cases from scratch

Whenever I start a new case, I find the tutorial case that most closely matches what I am trying to accomplish. This greatly speeds things up. It will take you a super long time to set up any case from scratch – and you’ll probably make a bunch of mistakes, forget key variable entries etc. The OpenFOAM developers have done a lot of work setting up the tutorial cases for you, so use them!

As you continue to work in OpenFOAM on different projects, you should be compiling a library of your own templates based on previous work.

(4) Using Ubuntu makes things much easier

This is strictly my opinion. But I have found this to be true. Yes its true that Ubuntu has its own learning curve, but I have found that OpenFOAM works seamlessly in the Ubuntu or any Ubuntu-like linux environment. OpenFOAM now has Windows flavors using docker and the like- but I can’t really speak to how well they work – mostly because I’ve never bothered. Once you unlock the power of Linux – the only reason to use Windows is for Microsoft Office (I guess unless you’re a gamer – and even then more and more games are now on Linux). Not only that- but the VAST majority of forums and troubleshooting associated with OpenFOAM you’ll find on the internet are from Ubuntu users.

I much prefer to use Ubuntu with a virtual Windows environment inside it. My current office setup is my primary desktop running Ubuntu – plus a windows VirtualBox, plus a laptop running windows that I use for traditional windows type stuff. Dual booting is another option, but seamlessly moving between the environments is easier.

(5) If you’re struggling, simplify

Unless you know exactly what you are doing, you probably shouldn’t dive into the most complicated version of whatever you are trying to solve/study. It is best to start simple, and layer the complexity on top. This way, when something goes wrong, it is much easier to figure out where the problem is coming from.

(6) Familiarize yourself with the cfd-online forum

If you are having trouble, the cfd-online forum is super helpful. Most likely, someone else is has had the same problem you have. If not, the people there are extremely helpful and overall the forum is an extremely positive environment for working out the kinks with your simulations.

(7) The results from checkMesh matter

If you run checkMesh and your mesh fails – fix your mesh. This is important. Especially if you are not planning on familiarizing yourself with the available numerical schemes in OpenFOAM, you should at least have a beautiful mesh. In particular, if your mesh is highly non-orthogonal, you will have serious problems. If you insist on using a bad mesh, you will probably need to manipulate the numerical schemes. A great source for how schemes should be manipulated based on mesh non-orthogonality is:

http://www.wolfdynamics.com/wiki/OFtipsandtricks.pdf

(8) CFL Number Matters

If you are running a transient case, the Courant-Freidrechs-Lewis (CFL) number matters… a lot. Not just for accuracy (if you are trying to capture a transient event) but for stability. If your time-step is too large you are going to have problems. There is a solid mathematical basis for this stability criteria for advection-diffusion problems. Additionally the Navier-Stokes equations are very non-linear and the complexity of the problem and the quality of your grid etc can make the simulation even less stable. When I have a transient simulation crash, if I know my mesh is OK, I decrease the timestep by a factor of 2. More often than not, this solves the problem.

For large time stepping, you can add outer loops to solvers based on the pimple algorithm, but you may end up losing important transient information. Excellent explanation of how to do this is given in the book by T. Holzmann:

https://holzmann-cfd.de/publications/mathematics-numerics-derivations-and-openfoam

For the record, this points falls into point (1) of Understanding CFD.

(9) Work through the OpenFOAM Wiki “3 Week” Series

If you are starting OpenFOAM for the first time, it is worth it to work through an organized program of learning. One such example (and there are others) is the “3 Weeks Series” on the OpenFOAM wiki:

https://wiki.openfoam.com/%223_weeks%22_series

If you are a graduate student, and have no job to do other than learn OpenFOAM, it will not take 3 weeks. This touches on all the necessary points you need to get started.

(10) OpenFOAM is not a second-tier software – it is top tier

I know some people who have started out with the attitude from the get-go that they should be using a different software. They think somehow Open-Source means that it is not good. This is a pretty silly attitude. Many top researchers around the world are now using OpenFOAM or some other open source package. The number of OpenFOAM citations has grown every year consistently (
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:groupPost:1920608-6518408864084299776/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28groupPost%3A1920608-6518408864084299776%2C6518932944235610112%29&replyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28groupPost%3A1920608-6518408864084299776%2C6518956058403172352%29).

In my opinion, the only place where mainstream commercial CFD packages will persist is in industry labs where cost is no concern, and changing software is more trouble than its worth. OpenFOAM has been widely benchmarked, and widely validated from fundamental flows to hypersonics (see any of my 17 publications using it for this). If your results aren’t good, you are probably doing something wrong. If you have the attitude that you would rather be using something else, and are bitter that your supervisor wants you to use OpenFOAM, when something goes wrong you will immediately think there is something wrong with the program… which is silly – and you may quit.

(11) Meshing… Ugh Meshing

For the record, meshing is an art in any software. But meshing is the only area where I will concede any limitation in OpenFOAM. HOWEVER, as I have outlined in my previous post (https://curiosityfluids.com/2019/02/14/high-level-overview-of-meshing-for-openfoam/) most things can be accomplished in OpenFOAM, and there are enough third party meshing programs out there that you should have no problem.

Summary

Basically, if you are starting out in CFD or OpenFOAM, you need to put in time. If you are expecting to be able to just sit down and produce magnificent results, you will be disappointed. You might quit. And frankly, thats a pretty stupid attitude. However, if you accept that CFD and fluid dynamics in general are massive fields under constant development, and are willing to get up to speed, there are few limits to what you can accomplish.

Please take the time! If you want to do CFD, learning OpenFOAM is worth it. Seriously worth it.

This offering is notapproved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributorof the OpenFOAM software via http://www.openfoam.com, and owner of theOPENFOAM®  andOpenCFD®  trade marks.

Here I will present something I’ve been experimenting with regarding a simplified workflow for meshing airfoils in OpenFOAM. If you’re like me, (who knows if you are) I simulate a lot of airfoils. Partly because of my involvement in various UAV projects, partly through consulting projects, and also for testing and benchmarking OpenFOAM.

Because there is so much data out there on airfoils, they are a good way to test your setups and benchmark solver accuracy. But going from an airfoil .dat coordinate file to a mesh can be a bit of pain. Especially if you are starting from scratch.

The two main ways that I have meshed airfoils to date has been:

(a) Mesh it in a C or O grid in blockMesh (I have a few templates kicking around for this
(b) Generate a “ribbon” geometry and mesh it with cfMesh
(c) Or back in the day when I was a PhD student I could use Pointwise – oh how I miss it.

But getting the mesh to look good was always sort of tedious. So I attempted to come up with a python script that takes the airfoil data file, minimal inputs and outputs a blockMeshDict file that you just have to run.

The goals were as follows:
(a) Create a C-Grid domain
(b) be able to specify boundary layer growth rate
(c) be able to set the first layer wall thickness
(e) be mostly automatic (few user inputs)
(f) have good mesh quality – pass all checkMesh tests
(g) Quality is consistent – meaning when I make the mesh finer, the quality stays the same or gets better
(h) be able to do both closed and open trailing edges
(i) be able to handle most airfoils (up to high cambers)
(j) automatically handle hinge and flap deflections

In Rev 1 of this script, I believe I have accomplished (a) thru (g). Presently, it can only hand airfoils with closed trailing edge. Hinge and flap deflections are not possible, and highly cambered airfoils do not give very satisfactory results.

There are existing tools and scripts for automatically meshing airfoils, but I found personally that I wasn’t happy with the results. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to illustrate one of the ways python can be used to interface with OpenFOAM. So please view this as both a potentially useful script, but also something you can dissect to learn how to use python with OpenFOAM. This first version of the script leaves a lot open for improvement, so some may take it and be able to tailor it to their needs!

Hopefully, this is useful to some of you out there!

Download

You can download the script here:

https://github.com/curiosityFluids/curiosityFluidsAirfoilMesher

Here you will also find a template based on the airfoil2D OpenFOAM tutorial.

Instructions

(1) Copy curiosityFluidsAirfoilMesher.py to the root directory of your simulation case.
(2) Copy your airfoil coordinates in Selig .dat format into the same folder location.
(3) Modify curiosityFluidsAirfoilMesher.py to your desired values. Specifically, make sure that the string variable airfoilFile is referring to the right .dat file
(4) In the terminal run: python3 curiosityFluidsAirfoilMesher.py
(5) If no errors – run blockMesh

PS
You need to run this with python 3, and you need to have numpy installed

Inputs

The inputs for the script are very simple:

ChordLength: This is simply the airfoil chord length if not equal to 1. The airfoil dat file should have a chordlength of 1. This variable allows you to scale the domain to a different size.

airfoilfile: This is a string with the name of the airfoil dat file. It should be in the same folder as the python script, and both should be in the root folder of your simulation directory. The script writes a blockMeshDict to the system folder.

DomainHeight: This is the height of the domain in multiples of chords.

WakeLength: Length of the wake domain in multiples of chords

firstLayerHeight: This is the height of the first layer. To estimate the requirement for this size, you can use the curiosityFluids y+ calculator

growthRate: Boundary layer growth rate

MaxCellSize: This is the max cell size along the centerline from the leading edge of the airfoil. Some cells will be larger than this depending on the gradings used.

The following inputs are used to improve the quality of the mesh. I have had pretty good results messing around with these to get checkMesh compliant grids.

BLHeight: This is the height of the boundary layer block off of the surfaces of the airfoil

LeadingEdgeGrading: Grading from the 1/4 chord position to the leading edge

TrailingEdgeGrading: Grading from the 1/4 chord position to the trailing edge

inletGradingFactor: This is a grading factor that modifies the the grading along the inlet as a multiple of the leading edge grading and can help improve mesh uniformity

trailingBlockAngle: This is an angle in degrees that expresses the angles of the trailing edge blocks. This can reduce the aspect ratio of the boundary cells at the top and bottom of the domain, but can make other mesh parameters worse.

Examples

12% Joukowski Airfoil

Inputs:

With the above inputs, the grid looks like this:

Mesh Quality:

These are some pretty good mesh statistics. We can also view them in paraView:

Clark-y Airfoil

The clark-y has some camber, so I thought it would be a logical next test to the previous symmetric one. The inputs I used are basically the same as the previous airfoil:

With these inputs, the result looks like this:

Mesh Quality:

Visualizing the mesh quality:

MH60 – Flying Wing Airfoil

Here is an example of a flying with airfoil (tested since the trailing edge is tilted upwards).

Inputs:

Again, these are basically the same as the others. I have found that with these settings, I get pretty consistently good results. When you change the MaxCellSize, firstLayerHeight, and Grading some modification may be required. However, if you just half the maxCell, and half the firstLayerHeight, you “should” get a similar grid quality just much finer.

Grid Quality:

Visualizing the grid quality

Summary

Hopefully some of you find this tool useful! I plan to release a Rev 2 soon that will have the ability to handle highly cambered airfoils, and open trailing edges, as well as control surface hinges etc.

The long term goal will be an automatic mesher with an H-grid in the spanwise direction so that the readers of my blog can easily create semi-span wing models extremely quickly!

Comments and bug reporting encouraged!

DISCLAIMER: This script is intended as an educational and productivity tool and starting point. You may use and modify how you wish. But I make no guarantee of its accuracy, reliability, or suitability for any use. This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributor of the OpenFOAM software via http://www.openfoam.com, and owner of the OPENFOAM®  and OpenCFD®  trademarks.

Here is a useful little tool for calculating the properties across a normal shock.

If you found this useful, and have the need for more, visit www.stfsol.com. One of STF Solutions specialties is providing our clients with custom software developed for their needs. Ranging from custom CFD codes to simpler targeted codes, scripts, macros and GUIs for a wide range of specific engineering purposes such as pipe sizing, pressure loss calculations, heat transfer calculations, 1D flow transients, optimization and more. Visit STF Solutions at www.stfsol.com for more information!

Disclaimer: This calculator is for educational purposes and is free to use. STF Solutions and curiosityFluids makes no guarantee of the accuracy of the results, or suitability, or outcome for any given purpose.

• Built-in automatic grid generation
• Built-in 3D compressible Euler Solver for fast aerodynamics analysis.
• Built-in 3D laminar Navier-Stokes solver
• Built-in 3D Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver
• Multi-core flow solver processing on your Windows laptop or desktop using OpenMP
• Inputs STL files for processing
• Built-in wing/hydrofoil geometry creation tool
• Enables stability derivative computation using quasi-steady rigid body rotation
• Up to 100 actuator disc (RANS solver only) for simulating jets and prop wash
• Reports the lift, drag and moment coefficients
• Reports the lift, drag and moment magnitudes
• Plots surface pressure, velocity, Mach number and temperatures
• Produces 2-d plots of Cp and other quantities along constant coordinates line along the structure

Happy 2021!

The year of 2020 will be remembered in history more than the year of 1918, when the last great pandemic hit the globe. As we speak, daily new cases in the US are on the order of 200,000, while the daily death toll oscillates around 3,000. According to many infectious disease experts, the darkest days may still be to come. In the next three months, we all need to do our very best by wearing a mask, practicing social distancing and washing our hands. We are also seeing a glimmer of hope with several recently approved COVID vaccines.

2020 will be remembered more for what Trump tried and is still trying to do, to overturn the results of a fair election. His accusations of wide-spread election fraud were proven wrong in Georgia and Wisconsin through multiple hand recounts. If there was any truth to the accusations, the paper recounts would have uncovered the fraud because computer hackers or software cannot change paper votes.

Trump's dictatorial habits were there for the world to see in the last four years. Given another 4-year term, he might just turn a democracy into a Trump dictatorship. That's precisely why so many voted in the middle of a pandemic. Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million, and won the electoral college in a landslide. Many churchgoers support Trump because they dislike Democrats' stances on abortion, LGBT rights, et al. However, if a Trump dictatorship becomes reality, religious freedom may not exist any more in the US. 

Is the darkest day going to be January 6th, 2021, when Trump will make a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results in the Electoral College certification process? Everybody knows it is futile, but it will give Trump another opportunity to extort money from his supporters.   

But, the dawn will always come. Biden will be the president on January 20, 2021, and the pandemic will be over, perhaps as soon as 2021.

The future of CFD is, however, as bright as ever. On the front of large eddy simulation (LES), high-order methods and GPU computing are making LES more efficient and affordable. See a recent story from GE.

• Ability to handle complex geometries, and ease of mesh generation
• Robustness for a wide variety of flow problems
• Scalability on supercomputers

(a) hpMusic 3rd Order, 9.6M DOFs

(b) Commercial Solver, 2nd Order, 28.7M DOFs

Figure 1. Comparison of Q-criterion and Schlieren  

I certainly believe high-order solvers are ready for industrial LES. In fact, the commercial version of our high-order solver, hoMusic (pronounced hi-o-music), is announced by hoCFD LLC (disclaimer: I am the company founder). Give it a try for your problems, and you may be surprised. Academic and trial uses are completely free. Just visit hocfd.com to download the solver. A GUI has been developed to simplify problem setup. Your thoughts and comments are highly welcome.

Happy 2018!     

From the Argonne National Laboratory + Convergent Science Blog Series

Imagine this: You’re flying on a plane. Maybe you’re sitting in the window seat, eating airline pretzels, happily watching an in-flight movie. But then—the flame in one of the plane’s gas turbine engines blows out. Should you panic? Well, ideally you wouldn’t even notice as the engine automatically relights and you continue cruising safely to your destination. But why did the engine blow out? Can we prevent that from happening? And if it does blow out, how can we ensure the plane stays airborne?

These are among the critical questions that Argonne National Laboratory and Convergent Science investigate together. If you’ve been following this series, you’ll know their collaboration started off focused on piston engines for automotive applications. But combustion engines across the board, including airplane engines, feature similar physical processes, and the research goals are frequently the same: increase efficiency and reduce emissions. In addition, CONVERGE’s unique combination of autonomous meshing, fully coupled detailed chemistry, and high-fidelity physical models for spray, turbulence, and combustion make it a great tool to help engine designers reach those goals. 

Before industry can implement 3D simulation into their design process, however, they need appropriate, well-validated models. This is where Argonne and Convergent Science come in—the core objective of their collaboration is performing fundamental research and developing models that industry can use to advance technology. In pursuit of this objective, Argonne and Convergent Science expanded their research efforts to aviation engines and beyond.

Gas Turbines

Gas turbine engines today are the most commonly used propulsion system for airplanes, and they are also widely used for power generation. Two key areas of current gas turbine research are increasing efficiency and reducing pollutant emissions. There are several approaches to achieving these goals, including the use of alternative fuels, altering the combustion environment (e.g., increasing operating pressures and temperatures), or reducing the fuel flow rate and moving toward a leaner combustion regime.

This lean burn approach, while effective at reducing emissions, poses significant design challenges. If you run the gas turbine engine too lean, the primary zone of the combustor can get too cold and the flame can blow out. This phenomenon, called lean blow-off or lean blow-out (LBO), is the reason the plane engine went out during our imaginary flight. Clearly, LBO is undesirable, and predicting the conditions at which it occurs is a primary focus for Argonne and Convergent Science, as well as for the broader gas turbine community.

LBO limits vary from fuel to fuel, and understanding these differences is critical, especially as alternative fuels become increasingly widespread. “The flame stabilization characteristics depend on the physical as well as the chemical properties of a given fuel, so our aim is to develop computational models that can predictively capture this behavior and the difference in performance between conventional and alternative fuels,” said Dr. Prithwish Kundu, Research Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.

Using CONVERGE, Argonne and Convergent Science engineers investigated the LBO limits for two fuels: A-2 (a conventional Jet-A fuel) and C-1 (an alternative fuel)¹. They conducted large eddy simulations (LES) of a realistic aviation gas turbine combustor from the U.S. National Jet Fuels Combustion Program (NJFCP). The combustor geometry preserved all flow passages and included the dome, liners, dilution jets, and effusion cooling holes. A Lagrangian approach was used to model the spray and atomization of the liquid fuels, and detailed chemistry was used to simulate combustion.

Gas turbine simulations tend to be computationally intensive because of the large computational domain, complicated geometry featuring a wide range of length scales (e.g., from millimeter-sized holes to a meter-long combustor), and complex physical processes. Argonne and Convergent Science engineers leveraged CONVERGE’s autonomous meshing to speed up the simulation setup and runtime. Automatic mesh generation saved weeks of time on the simulation setup, and Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) helped shape the optimal mesh for desired spatial resolution to capture the complicated physical phenomena while keeping the overall cell count relatively low. 

With this method, Argonne and Convergent Science were able to accurately predict the difference in LBO limits for A-2 and C-1 fuels (Figure 1). Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have long desired a tool capable of predicting LBO, and demonstrating that CONVERGE is able to identify these limits in a reasonable amount of time is a significant achievement.

Having validated CONVERGE’s ability to predict LBO for conventional and alternative fuels, Argonne and Convergent Science engineers are turning to high altitude relight, which is the key to keeping our planes in the air should LBO occur. High altitude relight happens under challenging conditions, i.e., very low temperature and pressure. The NJFCP is currently developing an experimental database for high altitude relight, which Argonne and Convergent Science plan to use to validate their CONVERGE simulations. Overall, these studies pave the way for creating cleaner gas turbine engines, while also ensuring the safety of air travel.

Rotating Detonation Engines

Improving traditional gas turbines is only one way to achieve high-efficiency, low-emissions engines for the aerospace and power generation industries.

“Emissions standards are regularly becoming more stringent, so gas turbines have to evolve accordingly,” said Dr. Gaurav Kumar, Principal Engineer at Convergent Science. “With stricter regulations, the technologies may need to be not just evolutionary, but revolutionary.”

Rotating detonation engines (RDEs) are one potentially revolutionary technology. RDE is an advanced engine concept that is both robust and scalable—you can run an RDE at a fairly wide range of fuel-air equivalence ratios, and you can produce both small and large engines from essentially the same design (Figure 2).

Compared to deflagrative combustion (which is typical in most gas turbine engines), detonative combustion offers a number of benefits, including a substantial increase in efficiency and decrease in emissions. Detonative combustion also provides greater thrust for the same amount of fuel, which is a significant advantage for propulsion applications, such as powering aircrafts and rockets. 

However, RDEs are still in the development phase, and there are certain challenges that have kept them from becoming widely adopted.

“First, maintaining a stable detonation wave is tricky, given that the mixing is highly complex and chaotic,” said Dr. Pinaki Pal, Research Scientist at Argonne. “Thermal management is another challenge, because RDEs have a high thermal load that is unequally distributed throughout the device due to the cyclic combustion wave. This behavior can fatigue the device and shorten its lifespan.”

In addition, an RDE is a difficult environment in which to take experimental measurements. Any instrument you use must be able to capture the high frequencies and large amplitude range of the RDE, while also surviving the harsh conditions inside the device. Moreover, many experimental tools provide averaged results, such as the average temperature or pressure at the device exit. These tools fail to capture the transient nature of an RDE as the detonation wave travels around the engine. Ultimately, new methods to analyze RDEs are needed.

CFD allows you to probe any point in time and space within your computational domain, so researchers can leverage simulations to better understand the chaotic, supersonic combustion in an RDE. To that end, Argonne and Convergent Science engineers simulated both hydrogen- and ethylene-fueled RDEs in CONVERGE using detailed chemistry, LES, and autonomous meshing^2,3.

Argonne and Convergent Science engineers quantified several key characteristics of the detonation wave, including wave height and frequency, for the hydrogen- and ethylene-fueled RDEs. The results are shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. For both cases, CONVERGE accurately captures the key RDE parameters compared with experimental data from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.

“With CONVERGE, we’re able to get good quality combustion results with about 10–15 million cells, when other codes were using 90 million cells or more,” said Scott Drennan, Director of Gas Turbine and Aftertreatment Applications at Convergent Science. “And one of the key ways we’re able to do that is through Adaptive Mesh Refinement, which allows us to track the detonation wave by refining the mesh when and where it’s needed at every time step.”

Argonne and Convergent Science also employed a computational diagnostic tool called chemical explosive mode analysis (CEMA) to better understand the local combustion regime. This technique had previously been applied to diesel and scramjet engines, but this was the first time it was implemented for an RDE. Based on an eigenanalysis of the local chemical Jacobian, CEMA is able to identify local combustion modes, such as auto-ignition, deflagrative fronts, and local extinction.

“We demonstrated that CEMA is able to accurately capture the local combustion behavior within an RDE,” said Dr. Pal. “What we would like to do next is develop an on-the-fly dynamic adaptive modeling technique to prescribe regime-dependent combustion models based on the local combustion regime identified by CEMA, which would drastically reduce the computational cost and enhance the accuracy of a CFD simulation.”

In addition to further CEMA studies, there are several other areas of research that Argonne and Convergent Science plan to pursue. One project currently underway is extending the modeling approach used for the studies described above to rocket RDEs. Up to this point, Argonne and Convergent Science have simulated air-breathing RDEs. Now, they are investigating a methane-fueled rocket RDE that uses oxygen instead of air as the oxidizer. Another upcoming project is to simulate the combustor coupled with the turbine in order to evaluate the overall performance of the system. These predictive CFD models will enable engineers to gain more insight into the combustion phenomena in an RDE and to develop design strategies that can help propel the technology into the mainstream.

Jet-in-Crossflow

As Argonne and Convergent Science work to achieve more predictive engine simulations, one area that holds significant potential for improvement is spray modeling. One of the simplest questions we can ask is, “Where does the fuel go?” The trajectory of the spray impacts all of the downstream processes in a combustor: fuel-air mixing, ignition, combustion, emissions, and thrust. But actually determining where the fuel goes is anything but simple.

“It’s a beautifully complex problem,” said Dr. Gina Magnotti, Research Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. “The spray is sensitive to the local operating conditions, the injector geometry, the fuel properties—and we don’t necessarily have a full grasp on all of the salient physics that control the fuel spray atomization. What happens in the first few millimeters from the injector or atomizer exit has great consequences for the fuel-air mixing and the dispersion of the spray.”

Both gas turbines and RDEs feature jet-in-crossflow type mixing, so Dr. Magnotti and her colleagues conducted a CFD study to better understand this process⁴. They synthetically imposed realistic surface roughness inside the injector geometry. For their CONVERGE simulations, they coupled LES with a volume of fluid (VOF) approach to understand how the initial flow development impacts the spray formation process. The results were compared to experimental measurements taken at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS). Ultimately, they found that imposing realistic surface roughness affects crosswise stretching of the jet and distribution of liquid mass, as shown in Figure 3.

This study demonstrated that there is still much to learn about the fuel injection process, and Argonne and Convergent Science plan to continue research in this area. A better understanding of the link between internal injector flow and spray formation will provide more accurate boundary conditions for gas turbine and RDE simulations, which will improve their predictive capability. 

Fearless Engineering

The overarching goal of all these projects is to develop predictive computational models that industry can use to design revolutionary technology. The collaboration between Argonne and Convergent Science enables the fundamental research necessary to develop these models and provides a path for the models to get into the hands of industry. Working with Argonne also helps Convergent Science extend CONVERGE’s capabilities to new application areas and enables cutting-edge research in new, exciting fields. As Dr. Dan Lee, Co-Owner and Vice President of Convergent Science, puts it:

It’s a privilege to work with organizations like Argonne. One of the greatest ways to learn about new applications or expand your value proposition in new applications is to partner with people who already have experience in that area. When we partner with Argonne, we’re dealing with experts in a wide variety of applications. And what’s more is that any new area we want to go into, even if Argonne doesn’t currently have expertise in that particular area, they’re used to going into new research areas—they’re fearless. And that’s a great combination: talented, experienced, fearless.

Pushing fearlessly into these new research areas—aerospace, power generation, and more—allows for a greater impact on society, helping to bring about a cleaner and safer world.

In case you missed the other posts in this series, you can find them here:

• Part 1: The Collaboration Effect: A Decade of Innovation
• Part 2: The Collaboration Effect: Advancing Engines Through Simulation & Experimentation

References

[1] Hasti, V.R., Kundu, P., Kumar, G., Drennan, S.A., Sibendu, S., Won, S.H., Dryer, F.L., and Gore, J.P., “Lean Blow-Out (LBO) Computations in a Gas Turbine Combustor,” 2018 AIAA/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, AIAA 2018-4958, Cincinnati, OH, United States, Jul 9–11, 2018. DOI: 10.2514/6.2018-4958

[2] Pal, P., Xu, C., Kumar, G., Drennan, S.A., Rankin, B.A., and Som, S., “Large-Eddy Simulation and Chemical Explosive Mode Analysis of Non-Ideal Combustion in a Non-Premixed Rotating Detonation Engine,” AIAA SciTech 2020 Forum, AIAA 2020-2161, Orlando, FL, United States, Jan 6–10, 2020. DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-2161

[3] Pal, P., Xu, C., Kumar, G., Drennan, S.A., Rankin, B.A., and Som, S., “Large-Eddy Simulations and Mode Analysis of Ethylene/Air Combustion in a Non-Premixed Rotating Detonation Engine,” AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2020 Forum, AIAA 2020-3876, Online, Aug 24–28, 2020. DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-3876

[4] Magnotti, G.M., Lin, K.-C., Carter, C.D., Kastengren, A., and Som, S., “A Computational Investigation of the Effect of Surface Roughness on the Development of a Liquid Jet in Subsonic Crossflow,” AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2020 Forum, AIAA 2020-3880, Online, Aug 24–28, 2020. DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-3880

We’ve reached the end of 2020, and I think it’s fair to say this year did not go as planned. The coronavirus pandemic disrupted our lives and brought on unexpected challenges and hardships. However, this difficult time has also highlighted the resiliency of people all around the globe—we have adapted and innovated to meet these challenges head on. At Convergent Science, that meant finding new ways to communicate and collaborate to ensure we could continue to deliver the best possible software and support to our users, all while keeping our employees safe.

Despite the pandemic, we experienced exciting opportunities, advancements, and milestones at Convergent Science this past year. We hosted two virtual conferences, continued to expand into new markets and new application areas, began new collaborations, increased our employee count, and, of course, continued to improve and develop CONVERGE. 

CONVERGE 3.1: A Preview

We have spent much of 2020 developing the next major release of our CONVERGE CFD software: version 3.1. There’s a lot to look forward to in CONVERGE 3.1, which will be released next year. In CONVERGE 3.0, we added the ability to incorporate stationary inlaid meshes into a simulation. In 3.1, these inlaid meshes will be able to move within the underlying Cartesian grid. For example, you will be able to create an inlaid mesh around each of the intake valves in an IC engine simulation, and the mesh will move with the valve as it opens and closes. With this method, you can achieve high grid resolution normal to the valve surface using significantly fewer cells than with traditional fixed embedding. 

Another enhancement will allow you to use different solvers, meshes, physical models, and chemical mechanisms for different streams (i.e., portions of the domain). This means you will be able to tailor your simulation settings to each stream, which will improve solver speed and numerical performance. CONVERGE 3.1 will also feature new sealing capabilities that enable you to have any objects come into contact with one another in your simulation or have objects enter or leave your simulation. 

Furthermore, CONVERGE 3.1 will support solid- and gas-phase parcels in addition to the traditional liquid-phase parcels. This can be useful when modeling, for example, soot or injectors operating at flash-boiling conditions. CONVERGE 3.1 will also feature an improved steady-state solver that will provide significant improvements in speed, and we have enhanced our fluid-structure interaction, volume of fluid, combustion, and emissions modeling capabilities. There are many more exciting features and enhancements coming in 3.1, so stay tuned for more information!

Pursuing High-Performance Computing with Oracle

Improving the scalability of CONVERGE continues to be a strong focus of our development efforts. We work with several companies and institutions, testing CONVERGE on different high-performance computing (HPC) architectures and optimizing our software to ensure good scaling. To that end, we were thrilled to begin a new collaboration this year with Oracle, a leader in cloud computing and enterprise software. In our benchmark testing, we have seen near perfect scaling of CONVERGE on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on thousands of cores. This collaboration presents a great opportunity for CONVERGE users to take advantage of Oracle’s advanced HPC resources to efficiently run large-scale simulations in the cloud. 

Best Use of HPC in Industry

For the second year in a row, we were honored to win an HPCwire award for research performed with our colleagues at Aramco Research Center–Detroit and Argonne National Laboratory. This year, we received the HPCwire Readers’ Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Industry for our work using HPC and machine learning to accelerate injector design optimization for next-generation high-efficiency, low-emissions engines. Our collaborative work is forging the way to leverage HPC, novel experimental measurements, and CFD to perform rapid optimization studies and reduce our carbon footprint from transportation.

Computational Chemistry Consortium

In another collaborative effort, the Computational Chemistry Consortium (C3) made significant progress in 2020. Co-founded by Convergent Science, C3 is working to create the most accurate and comprehensive chemical reaction mechanism for automotive fuels that includes NOx and PAH chemistry to model emissions. The first version of the mechanism was completed last year and is currently available to C3’s industry sponsors. Once the mechanism is published, it will be released to the public on fuelmech.org. This past year, C3 has continued to refine the mechanism, which has now reached version 2.1. The results of these efforts have been rewarding—we’ve seen a significant decrease in error in selected validation cases. The next year of the consortium will focus on increasing the accuracy of the NOx and PAH chemistry. To that end, C3 welcomed a new member this year, Dr. Stephen Klippenstein from Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Klippenstein will perform high-level ab initio calculations of rate constants in NOx chemistry. Ultimately, the C3 mechanism is expected to be the first publicly available mechanism that includes everything from hydrogen chemistry all the way up to PAH chemistry in a single high-fidelity mechanism.

Driving Mobility Forward

In 2020, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary of collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory. Over the past decade, this collaboration has helped us extend CONVERGE’s capabilities and broach new application areas. We have performed cutting-edge research in the transportation field, developing new methods and models that are proving to be instrumental in designing the next generation of engines. In the aerospace field, we’ve broken ground in applying CFD to gas turbines, rotating detonation engines, drones, and more. We’ve made great strides in the last ten years, and we’re looking forward to the next decade of collaboration!

Bringing CONVERGE Online

Every year, we look forward to getting together with our users, discussing the latest exciting CONVERGE research and having some fun at our user conferences. When the pandemic struck and countries began locking down earlier this year, we were determined to still hold our 2020 CONVERGE User Conference–Europe, even if it looked a bit different. Our conference was scheduled for the end of March, so we didn’t have much time to transition from an in-person to an online event, but our team was up for the challenge. In less than three weeks, we planned a whole new event and successfully held one of the first pandemic-era virtual conferences. We were so pleased with the result! More than 400 attendees from around the world tuned in for an excellent lineup of technical presentations, which spanned topics from IC engines to compressors to electric motors and battery packs. 

While we hoped to hold our North American user conference in Detroit later in the year, the continued pandemic made that impossible. Once again, we took to the internet. We incorporated some more networking opportunities, including various social groups and discussion topics, and created some fun polls to help attendees get to know one another. We were also able to offer our usual slate of conference-week CONVERGE training and virtual exhibit booths for our sponsors. The presentations at this conference showcased the breadth and diversity of applications for which CONVERGE is suited, with speakers discussing rockets, gas turbines, exhaust aftertreatment, biomedical applications, renewable energy, and electromobility in addition to a host of IC engine-related topics.

It’s hard to know what 2021 will look like, but rest assured we will be hosting more conferences, virtual or otherwise. We’re looking forward to the day we can get together in person once again!

CONVERGE Around the World

Even with the pandemic, 2020 was an exciting and productive year for Convergent Science around the globe. We gained nearly a dozen new employees, including bringing on team members in newly created roles to help expand our relationships with universities and to increase our in-house CAD design capabilities. We also continued to find new markets for CONVERGE as we entered the emobility, rocket, and burner industries. 

Our Indian office flourished in 2020. Since its creation three years ago, Convergent Science India has grown to more than 20 employees, adding nine new team members this year alone. To accommodate our growing team, we moved to a spacious new building in Pune. Our team in India expanded our global reach, bringing new academic and industry clients on board. In addition, we continued to work on growing our presence in new applications such as gas turbines, aftertreatment, motor cooling, battery failure, oil churning, and spray painting.

In Europe, despite the challenging circumstances, we increased our client base and our license sales considerably, and we were able to successfully and seamlessly support our customers to help them achieve their CFD goals. In addition to moving our European CONVERGE user conference online in record time, we attended and exhibited at many virtual tradeshows and events and are looking forward to attending in-person conferences as soon as it is safe to do so.

Our partners at IDAJ continued to do excellent work supporting our customers in Japan, China, and Korea. Due to the pandemic, they held their first-ever IDAJ Conference Online 2020, where they had both live lectures and Q&A sessions as well as on-demand streaming content. While they support many IC engine clients, they are also supporting clients working on other applications such as motor cooling, battery failure, oil churning, and spray painting.

Looking Ahead

2020 was a difficult year for many of us, but I am impressed and inspired by the way the CFD community and beyond has come together to make the most of a challenging situation. And the future looks bright! We’re looking forward to releasing CONVERGE 3.1 and helping our users take advantage of the increased functionality and new features that will be available. We’re excited to expand our presence in electromobility, renewable energy, aerospace, and other new fields. In the upcoming year, we look forward to forming new collaborations and strengthening existing partnerships to promote innovation and keep CONVERGE on the cutting-edge of CFD software.

Can we help you meet your 2021 CFD goals? Contact us today!

In my first year of graduate school, a friend always filled up her water bottle, dropped some ice cubes into it, and then shook it up in order to cool the water faster. If she had added the ice cubes and let the water bottle sit, eventually all the water would equilibrate to the same temperature, but that would take a while without any movement—the water next to the ice cubes would cool down quickly, but the water farther away would cool down at a much slower rate. By shaking it up, she agitated the water and ice so that the ice came into contact with more of the warm water that needed to be cooled. This “cocktail shaker effect,” I would later find out, also applies to cooling engines. 

Combustion in an internal combustion (IC) engine occurs on top of the piston, which means that there is an extraordinary amount of heat generated on the piston crown. If left unmediated, this heat can cause the piston to break. The threat of piston damage is particularly high in diesel engines because more heat is generated in the cylinder than in a traditional gasoline engine. Unlike a bottle of warm water, though, we can’t just drop a few ice cubes into the cylinder to act as a heat sink. 

Here we see how engineers can use CONVERGE to efficiently solve the problem of cooling the piston so that it isn’t damaged by heat. The idea is simple—use engine oil as a heat sink—but the implementation is complex since the piston is constantly moving and nothing can be in contact with the piston crown inside the cylinder. 

Since the heat sink can’t be inside the cylinder on the piston crown, there is an oil gallery in contact with the undercrown of the piston, as shown in Figure 1. Engine oil is taken through a pump, pressurized, and constantly sprayed at the oil gallery inlet hole. In the video below, you will see how the oil enters the gallery, and, as the piston motion continues, the oil sloshes inside the oil gallery, absorbing heat from the piston before exiting the outlet hole on the other side of the gallery. 

There are several factors that are important to consider when designing this type of cooling system, all of which CONVERGE is well-equipped to handle. What size and shape should the inlet and outlet holes be to capture the stream of oil? How much oil will enter the gallery compared to how much was sprayed (i.e., capture ratio)? What is the best design of the gallery so that the oil effectively absorbs heat from the piston? What ratio of the gallery volume should be occupied (i.e., fill ratio) to ensure that the oil can move and absorb heat efficiently? CONVERGE provides answers to these questions and others through a volume of fluid (VOF) simulation. 

Because a simple boundary condition is not predictive of the heat transfer throughout the entire piston, we use conjugate heat transfer (CHT) to more accurately predict the piston cooling by solving the heat distribution inside the piston. Understanding how heat transfer affects the whole piston is an essential step toward designing a geometry that will effectively cool more than just the piston surface. While CHT can be computationally expensive due to the difference in time-scales of heat transfer in the solid and fluid regions, CONVERGE provides the option to use super-cycling, which can significantly reduce the computational cost of this type of simulation.

In the video below, you will see how the above factors have been optimized to dissipate heat from the piston crown and throughout the piston as a whole. In the video on the left, you can watch the temperature contours change during the simulation as heat dissipates. The second view shows how CONVERGE’s Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) is in action throughout the simulation, providing increased grid resolution near the inlet and around the oil gallery, where it is needed most. 

Ready to run your own simulations to optimize oil jet piston cooling? Contact us today!

From the Argonne National Laboratory + Convergent Science Blog Series

Through the collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and Convergent Science, we provide fundamental research that enables manufacturers to design cleaner and more efficient engines by optimizing combustion. 

–Doug Longman, Manager of Engine Research at Argonne National Laboratory

The internal combustion engine has come a long way since its inception—the engine in your car today is significantly quieter, cleaner, and more efficient than its 1800s-era counterpart. For many years, the primary means of achieving these advances was experimentation. Indeed, we have experiments to thank for a myriad of innovations, from fuel injection systems to turbocharging to Wankel engines.

More recently, a new tool was added to the engine designer’s toolbox: simulation. Beginning in the 1970s and ‘80s, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) opened the door to a new level of refinement and optimization.

“One of the really cool things about simulation is that you can look at physics that cannot be easily captured in an experiment—details of the flow that might be blocked from view, for example,” says Eric Pomraning, Co-Owner of Convergent Science.

Of course, experiments remain vitally important to engine research, since CFD simulations model physical processes, and experiments are necessary to validate your results and ground your simulations in reality.

Argonne National Laboratory and Convergent Science combine these two approaches—experiments and simulation—to further improve the internal combustion engine. Two of the main levers we have to control the efficiency and emissions of an engine are the fuel injection system and the ignition system, both of which have been significant areas of focus during the collaboration.

Fuel Injection

The combustion process in an internal combustion engine really begins with fuel injection. The physics of injection determine how the fuel and air in the cylinder will mix, ignite, and ultimately combust. 

Argonne National Laboratory is home to the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. The APS provides a unique opportunity to characterize the internal passages of injector nozzles with incredibly high spatial resolution through the use of high-energy x-rays. This data is invaluable for developing accurate CFD models that manufacturers can use in their design processes.

Early on in the collaboration, Christopher Powell, Principal Engine Research Scientist at Argonne, and his team leveraged the APS to investigate needle motion in an injector.

“Injector manufacturers had long suspected that off-axis motion of the injector valve could be present. But they never had a way to measure it before, so they weren’t sure how it impacted fuel injection,” says Chris.

The x-ray studies performed at the APS were the first in the world to confirm that some injector needles do exhibit radial motion in addition to the intended axial motion, a phenomenon dubbed “needle wobble.” Argonne and Convergent Science engineers simulated this experimental data in CONVERGE, prescribing radial motion to the injector needle. They found that needle wobble can substantially impact the fuel distribution as it exits the injector. Manufacturers were able to apply the results of this research to design injectors with a more predictable spray pattern, which, in turn, leads to a more predictable combustion event.

More recently, researchers at Argonne have used the APS to investigate the shape of fuel injector flow passages and characterize surface roughness. Imperfections in the geometry can influence the spray and the subsequent downstream engine processes. 

“If we use a CAD geometry, which is smooth, we will miss out on some of the physics, like cavitation, that can be triggered by surface imperfections,” says Sameera Wijeyakulasuriya, Senior Principal Engineer at Convergent Science. “But if we use the x-ray scanned geometry, we can incorporate those surface imperfections into our numerical models, so we can see how the flow field behaves and responds.”

Argonne and Convergent Science engineers performed internal nozzle flow simulations that used the real injector geometries and that incorporated real needle motion.¹ Using the one-way coupling approach in CONVERGE, they mapped the results of the internal flow simulations to the exit of each injector orifice to initialize a multi-plume Lagrangian spray simulation. As you can see in Figure 1, the surface roughness and needle motion significantly impact the spray plume—the one-way coupling approach captures features that the standard rate of injection (ROI) method could not. In addition, the real injector parameters introduce orifice-to-orifice variability, which affects the combustion behavior down the line.

The real injector geometries not only allow for more accurate computational simulations, but they also can serve as a diagnostic tool for manufacturers to assess how well their manufacturing processes are producing the desired nozzle shape and size.

Spark Ignition

Accurately characterizing fuel injection sets the stage for the next lever we can optimize in our engine: ignition. In spark-ignition engines, the ignition event initiates the formation of the flame kernel, the growth of the flame kernel, and the flame propagation mechanism.

“In the past, ignition was just modeled as a hot source—dumping an amount of energy in a small region and hoping it transitions to a flame. The amount of physics in the process was very limited,” says Sibendu Som, Manager of the Computational Multi-Physics Section at Argonne.

These simplified models are adequate for most stable engine conditions, but you can run into trouble when you start simulating more advanced combustion concepts. In these scenarios, the simplified ignition models fall short in replicating experimental data. Over the course of their collaboration, Argonne and Convergent Science have incorporated more physics into ignition models to make them robust for a variety of engine conditions. 

For example, high-performance spark-ignition engines often feature high levels of dilution and increased levels of turbulence. These conditions can have a significant impact on the ignition process, which consequently affects combustion stability and cycle-to-cycle variation (CCV). To capture the elongation and stretch experienced by the spark channel under highly turbulent conditions, Argonne and Convergent Science engineers developed a new ignition model, the hybrid Lagrangian-Eulerian spark-ignition (LESI) model.

In Figure 2, you can see that the LESI model more accurately captures the behavior of the spark under turbulent conditions compared to a commonly used energy deposition model.² The LESI model will be available in future versions of CONVERGE, accessible to manufacturers to help them better understand ignition and mitigate CCV.

Cycle-to-Cycle Variation

Ideally, every cycle of an internal combustion engine would be exactly identical to ensure smooth operation. In real engines, variability in the injection, ignition, and combustion means that not every cycle will be the same. Cyclic variability is especially prevalent in high-efficiency engines that push the limits of combustion stability. Extreme cycles can cause engine knock and misfires—and they can influence emissions.

“Not every engine cycle generates significant emissions. Often they’re primarily formed only during rare cycles—maybe one or two out of a hundred,” says Keith Richards, Co-Owner of Convergent Science. “Being able to capture cyclic variability will ultimately allow us to improve our predictive capabilities for emissions.”

Modeling CCV requires simulating numerous engine cycles, which is a highly (and at times prohibitively) time-consuming process. Several years ago, Keith suggested a potential solution—starting several engine cycles concurrently, each with a small perturbation to the flow field, which allows each simulation to develop into a unique solution. 

Argonne and Convergent Science compared this approach—called the concurrent perturbation method (CPM)—to the traditional approach of simulating engine cycles consecutively. Figure 3 shows CCV results obtained using CPM compared to concurrently run cycles, which you can see match very well.³ This means that with sufficient computational resources, you can predict CCV in the amount of time it takes to run a single engine cycle.

The study described above, and the vast majority of all CCV simulation studies, use large eddy simulations (LES), because LES allows you to resolve some of the turbulence scales that lead to cyclic variability. Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), on the other hand, provides an ensemble average that theoretically damps out variations between cycles. At least this was the consensus among the engine modeling community until Riccardo Scarcelli, a Research Scientist at Argonne, noticed something strange.

“I was running consecutive engine cycle simulations to move away from the initial boundary conditions, and I realized that the cycles were never converged to an average solution—the cycles were never like the cycle before or the cycle after,” Riccardo says. “And that was strange because I was using RANS, not LES.”

Argonne and Convergent Science worked together to untangle this mystery, and they discovered that RANS is able to capture the deterministic component of CCV. RANS has long been the predominant turbulence model used in engine simulations, so how had this phenomenon gone unnoticed? In the past, most engine simulations modeled conventional combustion, which shows little cyclic variability in practice in either diesel or gasoline engines. The more complex combustion regimes simulated today—along with the use of finer grids and more accurate numerics—allows RANS to pick up on some of the cycle-to-cycle variations that these engines exhibit in the real world. While RANS will not provide as accurate a picture as LES, it can be a useful tool to capture CCV trends. Additionally, RANS can be run on a much coarser mesh than LES, so you can get a faster turnaround on an inherently expensive problem, making CCV studies more practical for industry timelines.

Advancing Engine Technology

The gains in understanding and improved models developed during the Argonne and Convergent Science collaboration provide great benefit to the engine community. One of the primary missions of Argonne National Laboratory is to transfer knowledge and technology to industry. To that end, the models developed during the collaboration will continue to be implemented in CONVERGE, putting the technology in the hands of manufacturers, so they can create better engines. 

What can we look forward to in the future? There will continue to be a strong focus on developing high fidelity numerics, expanding and improving chemistry tools and mechanisms, integrating machine learning into the simulation process, and speeding up CFD simulations—establishing more efficient models and further increasing the scalability of CONVERGE to take advantage of the latest computational resources. Moreover, we can look forward to seeing the innovations of the last decade of collaboration incorporated into the engines of the next decade, bringing us closer to a clean transportation future.

In case you missed the other posts in the series, you can find them here:

• Part 1: The Collaboration Effect: A Decade of Innovation
• Part 3: The Collaboration Effect: Developing a New Generation of Gas Turbine & Rotating Detonation Engines

References

[1] Torelli, R., Matusik, K.E., Nelli, K.C., Kastengren, A.L., Fezzaa, K., Powell, C.F., Som, S., Pei, Y., Tzanetakis, T., Zhang, Y., Traver, M., and Cleary, D.J., “Evaluation of Shot-to-Shot In-Nozzle Flow Variations in a Heavy-Duty Diesel Injector Using Real Nozzle Geometry,” SAE Paper 2018-01-0303, 2018. DOI: 10.4271/2018-01-0303

[2] Scarcelli, R., Zhang, A., Wallner, T., Som, S., Huang, J., Wijeyakulasuriya, S., Mao, Y., Zhu, X., and Lee, S.-Y., “Development of a Hybrid Lagrangian–Eulerian Model to Describe Spark-Ignition Processes at Engine-Like Turbulent Flow Conditions,” Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power, 141(9), 2019. DOI: 10.1115/1.4043397
[3] Probst, D., Wijeyakulasuriya, S., Pomraning, E., Kodavasal, J., Scarcelli, R., and Som, S., “Predicting Cycle-to-Cycle Variation With Concurrent Cycles In A Gasoline Direct Injected Engine With Large Eddy Simulations”, Journal of Energy Resources Technology, 142(4), 2020. DOI: 10.1115/1.4044766

Renewable energy is being generated at unprecedented levels in the United States, and those levels will only continue to rise. The growth in renewable energy has been driven largely by wind power—over the last decade, wind energy generation in the U.S. has increased by 400% ¹. It’s easy to see why wind power is appealing. It’s sustainable, cost-effective, and offers the opportunity for domestic energy production. But, like all energy sources, wind power doesn’t come without drawbacks. Concerns have been raised about land use, noise, consequences to wildlife habitats, and the aesthetic impact of wind turbines on the landscape ².

However, there is a potential solution to many of these issues: what if you move wind turbines offshore? In addition to mitigating concerns over land use, noise, and visual impact, offshore wind turbines offer several other advantages. Compared to onshore, wind speeds offshore tend to be higher and steadier, leading to large gains in energy production. Also, in the U.S., a large portion of the population lives near the coasts or in the Great Lakes region, which minimizes problems associated with transporting wind-generated electricity. But despite these advantages, only 0.03% of the U.S. wind-generating capacity in 2018 came from offshore wind plants ¹. So why hasn’t offshore wind energy become more prevalent? Well, one of the major challenges with offshore wind energy is a problem of engineering—wind turbine support structures must be designed to withstand the significant wind and wave loads offshore.

Today, there are computational tools that engineers can use to help design optimized support structures for offshore wind turbines. Namely, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations can offer valuable insight into the interaction between waves and the wind turbine support structures. 

A CFD Case Study

Hannah Johlas is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Dr. David Schmidt’s lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Hannah uses CFD to study fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines at shallow-to-intermediate water depths (up to approximately 50 meters deep). Turbines located at these depths are of particular interest because of a phenomenon called breaking waves. As waves move from deeper to shallower water, the wavelength decreases and the wave height increases in a process called shoaling. If a wave becomes steep enough, the crest can overturn and topple forward, creating a breaking wave. Breaking waves can impart substantial forces onto turbine support structures, so if you’re planning to build a wind turbine in shallower water, it’s important to know if that turbine might experience breaking waves.

Hannah uses CONVERGE CFD software to predict if waves are likely to break for ocean characteristics common to potential offshore wind turbine sites along the east coast of the U.S. She also predicts the forces from breaking waves slamming into the wind turbine support structures. The results of the CONVERGE simulations are then used to evaluate the accuracy of simplified engineering models to determine which models best capture wave behavior and wave forces and, thus, which ones should be used when designing wind turbines.

CONVERGE Simulations

In this study, Hannah simulated 39 different wave trains in CONVERGE using a two-phase finite volume CFD model ³. She leveraged the volume of fluid (VOF) method with the Piecewise Linear Interface Calculation scheme to capture the air-water interface. Additionally, automated meshing and Adaptive Mesh Refinement ensured accurate results while minimizing the time to set up and run the simulations.

“CONVERGE’s adaptive meshing helps simulate fluid interfaces at reduced computational cost,” Hannah says. “This feature is particularly useful for resolving the complex air-water interface in breaking wave simulations.”

Some of the breaking waves were then simulated slamming into monopiles, the large cylinders used as support structures for offshore wind turbines in shallow water. The results of these CONVERGE simulations were validated against experimental data before being used to evaluate the simplified engineering models.

Results

Four common models for predicting whether a wave will break (McCowan, Miche, Battjes, and Goda) were assessed. The models were evaluated by how frequently they produced false positives (i.e., the model predicts a wave should break, but the simulated wave does not break) and false negatives (i.e., the model predicts a wave should not break, but the simulated wave does break) and how well they predicted the steepness of the breaking waves. False positives are preferable to false negatives when designing a conservative support structure, since breaking wave loads are usually higher than non-breaking waves.

The study results indicate that none of the models perform well under all conditions, and instead which model you should use depends on the characteristics of the ocean at the site you’re considering.

“For sites with low seafloor slopes, the Goda model is the best at conservatively predicting whether a given wave will break,” Hannah says. “For higher seafloor slopes, the Battjes model is preferred.”

Four slam force models were also evaluated: Goda, Campbell-Weynberg, Cointe-Armand, and Wienke-Oumerachi. The slam models and the simulated CFD wave forces were compared for their peak total force, their force time history, and breaking wave shape. 

The results show that all four slam models are conservative (i.e., predict higher peak forces than the simulated waves) and assume the worst-case shape for the breaking wave during impact. The Goda slam model is the least conservative, while the Cointe-Armand and Wienke-Oumerachi slam models are the most conservative. All four models neglect the effects of runup on the monopiles, which was present in the CFD simulations. This could explain some of the discrepancies between the forces predicted by the engineering models and the CFD simulations.

Significance

Offshore wind energy is a promising technology for clean energy production, but to gain traction in the industry, there needs to be sound engineering models to use when designing the turbines. Hannah’s research provides guidelines on which engineering models should be used for a given set of ocean characteristics. Her results also highlight the areas that could be improved upon. 

“The slam force models don’t account for variety in wave shape at impact or for wave runup on the monopiles,” Hannah says. “Future studies should focus on incorporating these factors into the engineering models to improve their predictive capabilities.”

CONVERGE for Renewable Energy

CFD has a fundamental role to play in the development of renewable energy. CONVERGE’s combination of autonomous meshing, high-fidelity physical models, and ability to easily handle complex, moving geometries make it particularly well suited to the task. Whether it’s studying the interaction of waves with offshore turbines, optimizing the design of onshore wind farms, or predicting wind loads on solar panels, CONVERGE has the tools you need to help bring about the next generation of energy production.

Interested in learning more about Hannah’s research? Check out her paper here.

References

[1] Marcy, C., “U.S. renewable electricity generation has doubled since 2008,” https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38752, accessed on Nov 11, 2016.

[2] Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, “U.S. Renewable Energy Factsheet”, http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-renewable-energy-factsheet, accessed on Nov 11, 2016.

[3] Johlas, H.M., Hallowell, S., Xie, S., Lomonaco, P., Lackner, M.A., Arwade, S.A., Myers, A.T., and Schmidt, D.P., “Modeling Breaking Waves for Fixed-Bottom Support Structures for Offshore Wind Turbines,” ASME 2018 1st International Offshore Wind Technical Conference, IOWTC2018-1095, San Francisco, CA, United States, Nov 4–7, 2018. DOI: 10.1115/IOWTC2018-1095

Across industries, manufacturers share many of the same goals: create quality products, boost productivity, and reduce expenses. In the pumps and compressors business, manufacturers must contend with the complexity of the machines themselves in order to reach these goals. Given the intricate geometries, moving components, and tight clearances between parts, designing pumps and compressors to be efficient and reliable is no trivial matter. 

First, assessing the device’s performance by building and testing a prototype can be time-consuming and costly. And when you’re performing a design study, machining and switching out various components further compounds your expenses. There are also limitations in how many instruments you can place inside the device and where you can place them, which can make fully characterizing the machine difficult. New methods for testing and manufacturing can help streamline this process, but there remains room for alternative approaches.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offers significant advantages for designing pumps and compressors. Through CFD simulations, you can obtain valuable insight into the behavior of the fluid inside your machine and the interactions between the fluid and solid components—and CONVERGE CFD software is well suited for the task.

Designed to model three-dimensional fluid flows in systems with complex geometries and moving boundaries, CONVERGE is equipped to simulate any positive displacement or dynamic pump or compressor. And with a suite of advanced models, CONVERGE allows you to computationally study the physical phenomena that affect efficiency and reliability—such as surge, pressure pulsations, cavitation, and vibration—to design an optimal machine.

The Value of CONVERGE

CFD provides a unique opportunity to visualize the inner workings of your machine during operation, generating data on pressures, temperatures, velocities, and fluid properties without the limitations of physical measurements. The entire flow field can be analyzed with CFD, including areas that are difficult or impossible to measure experimentally. This additional data allows you to comprehensively characterize your pump or compressor and pinpoint areas for improvement.

Since CONVERGE leads the way in predictive CFD technology, you can analyze pump and compressor designs that have not yet been built and still be confident in your results. Compared to building and testing prototypes, simulations are fast and inexpensive, and altering a computer-modeled geometry is trivial. Iterating through designs virtually and building only the most promising candidates reduces the expenses associated with the design process. 

While three-dimensional CFD is fast compared to experimental methods, it is typically slower than one- or two-dimensional analysis tools, which are often incorporated into the design process. However, 1D and 2D methods are inherently limited in their ability to capture the 3D nature of physical flows, and thus can miss important flow phenomena that may negatively affect performance. 

CONVERGE drastically reduces the time required to set up a 3D pump or compressor simulation with its autonomous meshing capabilities. Creating a mesh by hand—which is standard practice in many CFD programs—can be a weeks-long process, particularly for cases with complex moving geometries such as pumps and compressors. With autonomous meshing, CONVERGE automatically generates an optimized Cartesian mesh based on a few simple user-defined parameters, effectively eliminating all user meshing time. 

In addition, the increased computational resources available today can greatly reduce the time requirements to run CFD simulations. CONVERGE is specifically designed to enable highly parallel simulations to run on many processors and demonstrates excellent scaling on thousands of cores. Additionally, Convergent Science partners with cloud service providers, who offer affordable on-demand access to the latest computing resources, making it simple to speed up your simulations.

Validation Cases

Accurately capturing real-world physical phenomena is critical to obtaining useful simulation results. CONVERGE features robust fluid-structure interaction (FSI) modeling capabilities. For example, you can simulate the interaction between the bulk flow and the valves to predict impact velocity, fatigue, and failure points. CONVERGE also features a conjugate heat transfer (CHT) model to resolve spatially varying surface temperature distributions, and a multi-phase model to study cavitation, oil splashing, and other free surface flows of interest. 

CONVERGE has been validated on numerous types of compressors and pumps^1-10, and we will discuss two common applications below. 

Scroll Compressor

Scroll compressors are often used in air conditioning systems, and the major design goals for these machines today are reducing noise and improving efficiency. Scroll compressors consist of a stationary scroll and an orbiting scroll, which create a complex system that can be challenging to model. Some codes use a moving mesh to simulate moving boundaries, but this can introduce diffusive error that lowers the accuracy of your results. CONVERGE automatically generates a stationary mesh at each time-step to accommodate moving boundaries, which provides high numerical accuracy. In addition, CONVERGE employs a unique Cartesian cut-cell approach to perfectly represent your compressor geometry, no matter how complex. 

In this study¹, CONVERGE was used to simulate a scroll compressor with a deforming reed valve. An FSI model was used to capture the motion of the discharge reed valve. Figure 1 shows the CFD-predicted mass flow rate through the scroll compressor compared to experimental values. As you can see, there is good agreement between the simulation and experiment. 

This method is particularly useful for the optimization phase of design, as parametric changes to the geometry can be easily incorporated. In addition, Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) allows you to accurately capture the physical phenomena of interest while maintaining a reasonable computational expense.

Screw Compressor

Next, we will look at a twin screw compressor. These compressors have two helical screws that rotate in opposite directions, and are frequently used in industrial, manufacturing, and refrigeration applications. A common challenge for designing screw compressors—and many other pumps and compressors—is the tight clearances between parts. Inevitably, there will be some leakage flow between chambers, which will affect the device’s performance.

CONVERGE offers several methods for capturing the fluid behavior in these small gaps. Using local mesh embedding and AMR, you can directly resolve the gaps. This method is highly accurate, but it can come with a high computational price tag. An alternative approach is to use one of CONVERGE’s gap models to account for the leakage flows without fully resolving the gaps. This method balances accuracy and time costs, so you can get the results you need when you need them.

Another factor that must be taken into account when designing screw compressors is thermal expansion. Heat transfer between the fluid and the solid walls means the clearances will vary down the length of the rotors. CONVERGE’s CHT model can capture the heat transfer between the solid and the fluid to account for this phenomenon.

This study² of a dry twin screw compressor employs a gap model to account for leakage flows, CHT modeling to capture heat transfer, and AMR to resolve large-scale flow structures. Mass flow rate, power, and discharge temperature were predicted with CONVERGE and compared to experimentally measured values. This study also investigated the effects of the base grid size on the accuracy of the results. In Figure 2, you can see there is good agreement between the experimental and simulated data, particularly for the most refined grid. The method used in this study provides accurate results in a turn-around time that is practical for engineering applications.

Conclusion

The benefits CONVERGE offers for designing pumps and compressors directly translate to a tangible competitive advantage. CFD benefits your business by reducing costs and enabling you to bring your product to market faster, and CONVERGE features tools to help you optimize your designs and produce high-quality products for your customers. To find out how CONVERGE can benefit you, contact us today!

References

[1] Rowinski, D., Pham, H.-D., and Brandt, T., “Modeling a Scroll Compressor Using a Cartesian Cut-Cell Based CFD Methodology with Automatic Adaptive Meshing,” 24th International Compressor Engineering Conference at Purdue, 1252, West Lafayette, IN, United States, Jul 9–12, 2018.

[2] Rowinski, D., Li, Y., and Bansal, K., “Investigations of Automatic Meshing in Modeling a Dry Twin Screw Compressor,” 24th International Compressor Engineering Conference at Purdue, 1528, West Lafayette, IN, United States, Jul 9–12, 2018.

[3] Rowinski, D., Sadique, J., Oliveira, S., and Real, M., “Modeling a Reciprocating Compressor Using a Two-Way Coupled Fluid and Solid Solver with Automatic Grid Generation and Adaptive Mesh Refinement,” 24th International Compressor Engineering Conference at Purdue, 1587, West Lafayette, IN, United States, Jul 9–12, 2018.

[4] Rowinski, D.H., Nikolov, A., and Brümmer, A., “Modeling a Dry Running Twin-Screw Expander using a Coupled Thermal-Fluid Solver with Automatic Mesh Generation,” 10th International Conference on Screw Machines, Dortmund, Germany, Sep 18–19, 2018.

[5] da Silva, L.R., Dutra, T., Deschamps, C.J., and Rodrigues, T.T., “A New Modeling Strategy to Simulation the Compression Cycle of Reciprocating Compressors,” IIR Conference on Compressors, 0226, Bratislava, Slovakia, Sep 6–8, 2017. DOI: 10.18462/iir.compr.2017.0226

[6] Willie, J., “Analytical and Numerical Prediction of the Flow and Performance in a Claw Vacuum Pump,” 10th International Conference on Screw Machines, Dortmund, Germany, Sep 18–19, 2018. DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/425/1/012026

[7] Jhun, C., Siedlecki, C., Xu, L., Lukic, B., Newswanger, R., Yeager, E., Reibson, J., Cysyk, J., Weiss, W., and Rosenberg, G., “Stress and Exposure Time on Von Willebrand Factor Degradation,” Artificial Organs, 2018. DOI: 10.1111/aor.13323

[8] Rowinski, D.H., “New Applications in Multi-Phase Flow Modeling With CONVERGE: Gerotor Pumps, Fuel Tank Sloshing, and Gear Churning,” 2018 CONVERGE User Conference–Europe, Bologna, Italy, Mar 19–23, 2018. https://api.convergecfd.com/wp-content/uploads/David-Rowinski_Multiphase-Modeling-Gearbox-Power-Losses-Oil-Pump-Cavitation-and-Fuel-Tank-Sloshing.pdf

[9] Willie, J., “Simulation and Optimization of Flow Inside Claw Vacuum Pumps,” 2018 CONVERGE User Conference–Europe, Bologna, Italy, Mar 19–23, 2018. https://api.convergecfd.com/wp-content/uploads/james-willie-simulation-and-optimization-of-flow-inside-claw-vacuum-pumps.pdf

[10] Scheib, C.M., Newswanger, R.K., Cysyk, J.P., Reibson, J.D., Lukic, B., Doxtater, B., Yeager, E., Leibich, P., Bletcher, K., Siedlecki, C.A., Weiss, W.J., Rosenberg, G., and Jhun, C., “LVAD Redesign: Pump Variation for Minimizing Thrombus Susceptibility Potential,” ASAIO 65th Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, United States, Jun 26–29, 2019.

Graphcore has used a range of technologies from Mentor, a Siemens business, to successfully design and verify its latest M2000 platform based on the Graphcore Colossus™ GC200 Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) processor.

Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ software, a CAD-embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is part of the Simcenter portfolio of simulation and test solutions that enables companies optimize designs and deliver innovations faster and with greater confidence. Simcenter FLOEFD helps engineers simulate fluid flow and thermal problems quickly and accurately within their preferred CAD environment including NX, Solid Edge, Creo or CATIA V5. With this release, Simcenter FLOEFD helps users create thermal models of electronics packages easily and quickly. Watch this short video to learn how.

Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ software, a CAD-embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is part of the Simcenter portfolio of simulation and test solutions that enables companies optimize designs and deliver innovations faster and with greater confidence. Simcenter FLOEFD helps engineers simulate fluid flow and thermal problems quickly and accurately within their preferred CAD environment including NX, Solid Edge, Creo or CATIA V5. With this release, Simcenter FLOEFD allows users to add a component into a direct current (DC) electro-thermal calculation by the given component’s electrical resistance. The corresponding Joule heat is calculated and applied to the body as a heat source. Watch this short video to learn how.

Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ software, a CAD-embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is part of the Simcenter portfolio of simulation and test solutions that enables companies optimize designs and deliver innovations faster and with greater confidence. Simcenter FLOEFD helps engineers simulate fluid flow and thermal problems quickly and accurately within their preferred CAD environment including NX, Solid Edge, Creo or CATIA V5. With this release, the software features a new battery model extraction capability that can be used to extract the Equivalent Circuit Model (ECM) input parameters from experimental data. This enables you to get to the required input parameters faster and easier. Watch this short video to learn how.

Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ software, a CAD-embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is part of the Simcenter portfolio of simulation and test solutions that enables companies optimize designs and deliver innovations faster and with greater confidence. Simcenter FLOEFD helps engineers simulate fluid flow and thermal problems quickly and accurately within their preferred CAD environment including NX, Solid Edge, Creo or CATIA V5. With this release, Simcenter FLOEFD allows users to create a compact Reduced Order Model (ROM) that solves at a faster rate, while still maintaining a high level of accuracy. Watch this short video to learn how.

High semiconductor temperatures may lead to component degradation and ultimately failure. Proper semiconductor thermal management is key for design safety, reliability and mission critical applications.

Tecplot Chorus Basics

This video shows you the unique set of features in Tecplot Chorus. You’ll explore datasets from multiple simulations, compare results, and evaluate overall system performance. 

• Exploring a Cart3D dataset using Tecplot Chorus [4:54] Cart3D Delta Wing Model 
• Viewing Images [10:49]
• Identifying Cases of Interest [20:20]
• Diving Deep into the Simulation Data [24:12]
• Comparing Grids [28:28]
• Creating New Images & Variables [30:40]
• Q&A [42:47]

Read more about the capabilities of Tecplot Chorus. See tutorials in Tecplot Chorus videos. Tecplot Chorus is included with Tecplot 360 for customers with a TecPLUS maintenance agreement.

Q&A from the Webinar

Is there a version of Tecplot Chorus (and Tecplot 360) for academics?

Yes. Please see our Academic Suite.

What is the purpose of Tecplot Chorus? What is it primarily used for?

This tool helps engineers who run and generate many simulations or test data sets. The most common applications are:

• Optimizing your designs.
• Developing aero databases.
• Predicting performance over the operating envelope.
• Investigation an engineering problem.

In all these scenarios engineers need to manage their solution data, discover the trends and anomalies in output variables, and understand the underlying physics that cause these variations.

How do you easily visualize cell sizes of the grid as a density plot? [43:00]

In Tecplot 360, go to the menu Analyze > Calculate Variables. Click Select and choose the option to calculate the Cell Volume. This will compute the cell area for your 2D cells. The dataset we’re using is a finite-element triangle, therefore we’re going to be computing the cell areas. And because the areas are a cell-based value, we want to choose Cell Center and then Calculate. It takes just a minute to calculate. Let’s go into contour and multi coloring (just double click on the legend to bring up the dialog) and select Cell Volume.

Now the cell area has been calculated, and you can see that we have just a few values. Click add contour level to add a little bit more detail. Now you can see a contour plot of cell sizes or cell areas. If you need a cell volume, you might be able to use an isosurface to find areas of high cell volume, or use value blanking, because then you’re going through a three-dimensional object. You could also use a slice and pass it through there, because that will adopt the cell volume of the source cell.

Is there a way to change the default fonts and sizes or at least is there a way to change for the entire frame and not for each access separately? [45:08]

Let’s go back to a 2D plot because axes are available by default. First, select Frame > Frame Linking. Second, go to the tab Within Frame, and then check the Axis Style checkbox. Now, when you double click on the X axis and change the color to red, you can see that the X and Y change simultaneously. Similarly with labels, change the labels to green and you can see both the X and Y labels are changed.

The defaults can be changed in the Tecplot configuration file, tecplot.cfg located in your installation folder. This file will execute Tecplot macro commands to define the font defaults. More information in the Tecplot 360 User’s Manual Chapter 30-2 Configuration Files.

Note: If you are on a Linux machine and it’s a shared installation, then changing tecplot.cfg file in the Tecplot directory will change it for all users. If your company has a set of defaults that they want everyone to use, that is a great place to make the change. But if you want to make the change only for yourself, you can have a tecplot.cfg file in your home directory on Linux. And in that case, you’re going to want to add a “dot” to the filename: “.tecplot.cfg” – Tecplot 360 will use that as your personal default.

Where do I download Tecplot Chorus? [47:08]

Tecplot Chorus is included in the download of Tecplot 360 for Windows and Linux. There is a toggle in the installation of Tecplot 360 to also install Tecplot Chorus, which is on by default. Tecplot Chorus is not supported on Mac OS.

Are there plans to support Tecplot Chorus on Mac OS? [48:25]

Not yet. Tecplot products use a GUI toolkit called a Qt or “cute”, and we’ve encountered bugs with it on the Mac. We feel the user experience is not yet good enough to release a version on Mac OS. However, with each Qt release, we check to see whether the issues get resolved. We’re still waiting.

Is it possible to load point Cp data, in addition to the line plots forces and moments shown earlier? [50:40]

Let’s look at the plots I produced. I’ll go to Create Images. In this case I ran a macro to create a slice, extract that slice, and plot X versus Cp. You should be able to a create data command to select this and write a macro that creates the Cp curve. And then writes out only the data that you care about.

You could also use a custom action to create the data that you need. In that case, you would then have a new data file object that you could reference in the list.

Can you create images that required the loading of two files or multiple files? For example, if I wanted an image of the surface contours, a PLT file with a slice overlaid using an additional PLT file. [52:50]

This is kind of a tough one with the Tecplot Chorus. If we go back to the CSV file, you see that each tag references a single data file. There is a way, and we have tested this with fluent case and data files. In that case, you need two columns with the same tag name.

Is there a limit to the number of aux files for each solution? [54:40]

I’m assuming this means “Is there a limit for the number of columns for each row that I could have with aux files?”

There is no hard limit, but you may run into performance issues with having very long list.

Note that if I select a bunch of cases and select View Data and hit OK, Tecplot Chorus warns you that you’re about to load more than five data files. Tecplot 360 could get overwhelmed with large data, because of the way that frames are tiled.

Do deltas need to be on the same grid, just like normal Tecplot 360? [56:00]

Yes. All the cases used in the webinar have the same grid. But the XYZ locations don’t have to be in the same locations. Tecplot Chorus will look at how many points I have in each zone. In this example, I have 739,000. Tecplot Chorus will do a straight up subtraction of the Cp variable because that is what is assigned as my contour variable. If instead I happened to have 739,168 points, Tecplot Chorus wouldn’t give you the option. This toggle would be gray because we recognize that the grids are of different dimensions.

The post Back to Basics: Tecplot Chorus appeared first on Tecplot.

Design, analysis, and testing are the fun parts of the job, but the best scientists and engineers go the extra mile to communicate their results clearly. When it comes time to present your work to others, it’s important to remember that the purpose of the presentation is clear communication, and the goal is (usually) to make or defend a decision. Today we’re going to highlight a few simple things that might improve the clarity and function of your plots and presentations.

This 4th blog in the series is about making more effective plots and presentations. Our first three posts covered the importance of consistency, the value of tailoring your presentations for your audience, and what to plot and what not to plot.

Match Expectations & Conventions

Figure 1. Thermal maps for each different region of interest (volume, spray, and wall).

The first thing to remember is that for a given industry, discipline, or company, there are always going to be certain conventions and expectations. Adhering to these expected conventions will help your audience quickly understand what they are seeing. This might have to do with the orientation of the images, the layout of your plots, the definition of your axes, the colormap chosen for your contours, the units of your variables, or even the sequence of your slides. One classic example in the field of aerodynamics is to present the coefficient of pressure distributions with the Y-axis ‘flipped’. If you must deviate from your audience’s expectations make sure you have a good reason for it and take care to explain the discrepancies.

Figure 1 was created for an audience of combustion engineers who are expecting to see multiple thermal maps, one for each of the different regions of interest (volume, spray, and wall). And, of course, they want to see the temperatures in Kelvin!

Stick to The Point

Most people don’t need to be told not to include slides that are unrelated to the topic – but oftentimes that guideline is too permissive. During the design, analysis, or test you may have generated or collected a lot of data. You may have also completed validation studies, performed mesh sensitivity experiments, reviewed historical datasets, or any number of ancillary activities. Just because those activities contributed to the overall success of your project does not mean that they need to take up space in your slide deck. Try to pare down your presentation to show only the minimum amount of information that is necessary. If you’re concerned that your audience may ask questions that extend beyond the core of your presentation you can always include that information in your backup slides.

Line Plots & Scalar Data Are Your Friends

Figure 2. Drag polar at 3 separate Mach numbers.

Your post-processor shouldn’t function solely as a visualization tool, it’s also an analysis tool. What’s the difference?

Visualization turns raw data into pretty pictures (which certainly have their uses), but analysis refines the same raw data to make engineering decisions possible. All the isometric 3D contour maps in the world won’t give you a clear answer for how much drag your wing design produces at its cruise flight condition. And no, adding stream traces doesn’t change that. You plotted an isosurface of Mach number? That’s cool, but we still don’t know if the design meets the range requirements.

The point is simulation & test data are useful only if they help answer questions that provide guidance in engineering decision making. Line plots (for example, drag polars, resonance curves, distribution plots, etc.) can help make a complex dataset much easier to understand and act upon. Integrated quantities/scalar values are even easier to digest – and oftentimes these values play the biggest role in engineering decisions.

Figure 2 shows a drag polar at 3 separate Mach numbers. This simple line plot may not be the fanciest image ever produced – but drag polars are a staple of the aerodynamic design process and can inform a lot about the drag performance of your vehicle.

As always, these tips are intended to be general purpose. Conventions will vary widely depending on your discipline, and supporting plots will change based on the specific goals of your presentation. What should never change, no matter what, is your desire to make your presentations effective.

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Tecplot 360 layouts, stylesheets, and scripts can help ensure consistency in your plots.

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The post The Purpose is Communication, the Goal is a Decision appeared first on Tecplot.

It’s Back to Basics here at Tecplot. This first in a 3-part series is about Getting Started with Tecplot 360. In this webinar, you will learn tips, tricks, and best practices to help you work faster and more efficiently.

Here’s the webinar agenda [02:41], with timestamps!

• Touring the Tecplot 360 user interface [04:00]
• Loading and exploring the data [06:15]
• Calculating new quantities [26:35]
• Extracting data over time [34:08]
• Exporting images and videos [38:11]
• Q&A [42:18]

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Q&A From the Webinar

What is the difference between Tecplot 360 and Tecplot Focus?

Tecplot Focus is a scaled down version of Tecplot 360, which is primarily used for engineering plotting. The main differences are that Tecplot Focus has:

• Fewer data loaders.
• No CFD Analyze tools.
• No Python automation.
• 5 million data point limit.

Read the detailed differences in our Comparison PDF Tecplot 360 vs. Tecplot Focus.

Learn more about Tecplot 360, and try it for free.

Is there a free student plan available?

Please see the Academic Suite, or email campus@tecplot.com for academic licensing options. You can also download a free trial.

Can a style file be saved for multiple frames?

A style file is specific to a frame and doesn’t reference the dataset. A layout allows you to save properties for multiple frames But also includes reference to a specific dataset.

How do I copy and paste the graphics into Word and PowerPoint documents?

To make a quick copy and paste into your presentation, click in a Tecplot 360 frame to select it, and use ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy and paste your plot into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

The post Back to Basics: Tecplot 360 appeared first on Tecplot.

Figure 1. SLS Configurations

Analyzing Wide Range of SLS Flight Conditions

Aerodynamic support for the SLS requires the use of both wind-tunnel tests and computational simulations to develop aerodynamic databases across the flight mission profile, seen in Fig. 2. These data are generated for a range of flight regimes including launch, liftoff, ascent, and booster separation. Flight conditions for the SLS vary from low-speed conditions on or near the launchpad to supersonic speeds during ascent. Because of this wide range of flight conditions, numerous tools are required to accurately capture the properties of the complex flowfields that evolve over time. While experimental results are useful and necessary, computational simulations yield results at flight conditions not easily tested in a wind tunnel facility, and these results include some fine-scale details that are not measurable in a wind tunnel.

Figure 2: SLS mission profile.

Unfortunately, the data files from which the animation was extracted are extremely large, often being in excess of 10 terabytes of data, even when saving just a subset of the simulation data. Consequently, reduction of these data is time intensive from both human and computational perspectives, to the point where it is prohibitive to employ these techniques as an everyday tool for database-level analyses.

12x Reduction in Postprocessing Time with PyTecplot

In collaboration with Tecplot developers, a new parallel processing toolbox for PyTecplot has been developed and implemented to reduce the aforementioned datasets. Use of these new methods has reduced the postprocessing time by a factor of 12 relative to the baseline reduction methods. These newly-developed parallel data reduction routines reduced the time to make a movie, such as this one, from days to hours, thus enabling analyses across a much wider range of flight conditions.

More information on Artemis and SLS can be found on the NASA website.

Learn more about PyTecplot.

The post NASA SLS Flight Condition Analyses Time Reduced from Days to Hours appeared first on Tecplot.

Welcome back for our third post in a blog series about making more effective plots and presentations. Our first two posts covered the importance of consistency and the value of tailoring your presentations for your audience. This time we’re keeping it very simple by discussing a few common pitfalls with plot styling and formatting, and how avoiding them can improve your plot game.

XY-Line Plots

Let’s start off with the simplest of them all – line plots. If you have an engineering or science degree you have made dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these simple plots. When you’re making them for your own reference, you might not pay much heed to styling and formatting. But when it comes time to communicate your results to outside parties they become almost as essential as the analysis itself.

How many lines is too many? Well, that’s a tough one to answer because it depends on so many variables. Rather than make up an arbitrary rule of thumb for not overcrowding your XY-line plots – we thought it best to simply discuss how to make the lines stand out in a way that makes sense. First, let’s look at the sample dataset in Figure 1.

Figure 1. XY-Line Plot – hard to read.

Rainfall data for three cities is plotted over time: Seattle, Dallas, and Miami. Each city has three samples. This results in a total of nine lines on the plot. As you can see in Figure 1, it is not easy to quickly differentiate between the various lines. Although each line is a different color, there is insufficient contrast between them. In addition, although we know there are subsets of data for each city, it is not easy to pick out the related lines quickly.

Line and Marker Styling

Now, look at Figure 2 and see how much easier it is to digest.

Figure 2. XY-Line Plot – with differentiated lines.

No matter how it’s styled it’s still a lot of data to digest, but the improvement between Figures 1 and 2 is obvious. In Figure 2 we have not reduced the dimensionality of our plot, but we have added line and marker styling to make distinguishing each dataset easier. We have also matched the line color per the city-type. This makes it easy to see which series are related to one another. The moral of the lesson is – be sure to use all the plot formatting tools at your disposal to provide meaningful visual distinction between your datasets. This trick can be applied to much more than just XY line plots – try it on bar charts, scatter plots, and more.

Contour Plots

Whether you think Contours are just pretty colors meant to satisfy managers or a valuable tool for aiding engineering decision making is up to you. But if you’re going to use them, at least use them correctly. We’ll look at two separate issues related to contour plots. The first up: contour levels. Look at Figure 3.

Figure 3. Contour plot – pretty worthless, right?

Pretty worthless, right? Well forgive us if we are using extreme examples to prove our point, but Figure 3 obviously doesn’t tell us much. Contour plots are designed to show gradients of a field variable along a surface or plane. And to that end, you must set the contour levels at an interval that reveals the gradient. Depending on your dataset, you might wish to use a linear or an exponential distribution. To improve Figure 3 on our sample dataset, we’ll choose the latter.

Figure 4. Contour plot showing exponential distribution.

Figure 4 shows the same dataset but uses an exponential distribution to reveal the change in turbulent frequency. Depending on your dataset, you may wish to continue with a linear distribution and ensure your max, min, and interval values are adjusted to highlight the gradient.

Colorblind-friendly Colormaps

Figure 4 is already infinitely more useful than Figure 3, but it can be improved even further by applying another plot trick. Look at Figure 5.

Figure 5. Contour plot with colorblind friendly colormap

In Figure 5 we have the same dataset and the same contour levels as in Figure 4, but now we’ve applied a new colormap. Not only does using a colormap like this one provide a more intuitive sense of the field variable gradient, but it is also colorblind friendly. Colorblindness is not something you hear much about – but it’s a real issue that affects millions of people. Do your audience a favor and make your plots as colorblind friendly as you are able! There are web apps available that can help you evaluate your images.

Plot Zoom Level

Last, but not least, is ensuring that you are plotting your data with a field of view that is appropriate for your results. In this example, we’ll adjust the zoom level on plots showing flow over a cylinder. If the zoom is too far out, pertinent results are washed out by uninteresting far-field values. If the zoom is too close, it’s difficult to discern how the region of interest fits into the broader dataset. Figures 6 and 7 illustrate how NOT to set your zoom level.

Figure 6. Zoom level is too far out.

Figure 7. Zoom level is too far in.

Clearly, Figure 6 is zoomed out too far, and therefore gives us a view of the entirety of the far field. The result leaves it unclear what the analysis was of, let alone what the results were. Figure 7 has the opposite problem. The perspective is too close, which shows a clear view of the cylinder but very little information about how the flow develops.

Figure 8. Shows us a zoom level that is just right.

Ahh, that’s better! With the zoom set just right Figure 8 shows us a clear view of the cylinder and a detailed view of the upstream and downstream flows. Of course “just right” may look very different depending on your dataset and what you want to communicate. but just make sure to pay attention to how well your audience can see the pertinent information!

Building visuals to effectively communicate complex data is a very broad discipline, so forgive us if our examples are a tad elementary. The truth is that compelling plot styling can be accomplished in a variety of ways – and only you are in the position to determine what’s right for your data and audience. You’ll be alright if you just make sure it’s easy for your audience to understand your visuals.

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The post Plot This, Not That – Visual Communication appeared first on Tecplot.

This webinar welcomes Dr. Scott Imlay, Tecplot CTO. He will discuss his research on visualization of higher-order CFD results. CFD code developers are adopting higher-order finite-element CFD methods due to their potential to reduce computation cost while maintaining accuracy. These techniques have been an area of research for many years and are becoming more widely available in popular CFD codes. The webinar content is based on Scott’s technical presentation at AIAA SciTech 2021. Note that this is preliminary research on adding higher-order element visualization to Tecplot 360.​

Agenda (01:19)​

• What are higher-order elements​ (1:42)
• Why use higher-order elements (3:30)​
• Higher-Order Visualization Challenges (6:37)
• Basis Functions (8:32)
• Brick (Hexahedral) Sub-Division (12:06)
• Tetrahedral Sub-Division (12:51)
• Prism Sub-Division (13:32)
• Pyramid Sub-Division (14:38)
• Implementation (15:26)
• Results and Future work (17:33)​
• Q&A (23:02)

We are looking for partners to try our prototype add-on or to provide data for testing. If you are interested, please contact us! The best way is through our website contact form, or email scottimlay@tecplot.com.

Online Resources

• White paper referred to in this video, Recursive Sub-Division Technique for Higher-Order Pyramid and Prism Isosurface Visualization
• See all White Papers
• Paper on GMSH referred to in the video
• Dr. Scott Imlay’s blogs on Higher Order Elements

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Q&A From the Webinar

Is support planned for Tecplot file formats?

This is early research and we’ve not made definite plans for HOE support in the Tecplot file formats. We’re initially targeting reading CGNS format because it has an HOE specification. We don’t have definite plans for supporting HOE in Tecplot file formats yet. But we are looking at using the CGNS standard.

We are implementing this now as a Tecplot 360 add-on. The add-on is functional for showing the isosurfaces and the surface data. We are looking for research partners to collaborate with because we do believe that the industry will need HOE. You can contact me at scottimlay@tecplot.com.

Is the assumption that we have iso-parametric nodal data?

To rephrase your question, is our assumption that we allow curved elements of the same order as the basis function for this position (which would be iso-parametric)? The answer is yes, but that isn’t the solution for the long run. Our goal is to not require iso-parametric. We know that some people are doing linear geometry and higher order basis functions for the solution. Sometimes they have higher order basis functions for the geometry than they have for the solution. So it can go either way and we would like to support that. In the add-on we do use iso-parametric. If you want to create a linear element, in this case, put your edge-center nodes and location to give you a linear element.

Would you comment on how your algorithm relates to one in GMSH (algorithm for plotting high order solutions)?

I’m not super familiar with how GMSH does it. But my understanding is that GMSH also uses a subdivision technique. And it does not do it selectively for the isosurfaces. I think I should leave it there because I don’t want to state that I know more about GMSH than I do. Here is a paper about GMSH.

Did you consider using a Bézier representation rather than a heuristic buffer approach to make sure not to exclude extrema that cannot be seen via the nodal data itself?

It is a very good idea. We’ve thought about it, but we have not gone any farther than thinking about it. It is true that if you were to use Bézier representation, then they wouldn’t be nodal values anymore, but they would be the points in space that are used to adjust the shape of a B spline, for instance. And the minimum and the maximum are at those points. And so that way we could guarantee it.

The customers we have talked to are not using that as their basis functions. And so we would have to find a way to convert from more common basis functions to that before. If any of you are using those Bezier (or Bernstein polynomial) basis functions for not just the geometry, but for your solution data, I would really like to hear from you and learn more about it. Please contact me at scottimlay@tecplot.com. 

How does the presence of higher-level (higher-order) elements affect interpolations onto a different grid in terms of fidelity and cost?

The add-on does not currently change the interpolations within Tecplot 360. If you were to interpolate to another grid, it wouldn’t take advantage of that at this time, but in the long run we certainly intend to do that.

In the future, the underlying basis functions would be utilized exactly. And your interpolation to any new nodes would be based on the higher-order basis functions. In terms of fidelity, that would mean it has the same fidelity as the higher-order solution.

The second part of your question is about cost. The cost is going to be higher per cell because it must solve of a nonlinear system of equations. If you have nonlinear geometry, it will have to solve a system of nonlinear equations to do the interpolation. But you have far fewer elements generally in a higher-order mesh than you do in a linear mesh. And so that means it’s quite possible that it would be cheaper overall than if you’re just going from a linear mesh to your new mesh.

How does Tecplot know the basis functions used for the higher-order solution? Does Tecplot expect solutions to be converted to a predefined format?

We support only the CGNS format, the quadratic or Lagrangian elements. If you are, for instance, converted into CGNS then it will have element type for each of the zones. And when we read that CGNS file, that’s how we know. The basis functions are effectively defined by the file format and element type.

The post Webinar: Visualizing Isosurfaces of Higher Order Elements appeared first on Tecplot.