I am a phd student and new one on cfd programms and I am intersted in thermal analysis of buildings with double skin facades. This means I have to study the air flow in the cavity between the 2 skins(the external skin is usually of glass and the internal skin is the common brick wall and concrete) and the thermal distribution in the building. Which of the programms, CFX and FLUENT, is the best for thermal analysis of buildings and the air flow simulation? Any help will be useful... Thanks a lot to everybody!

Hi Apostolos,

One advantage to CFX for this simulation is that the Monte-Carlo radiation model it uses will allow you to include the radiation through the glass in a conjugate heat transfer analysis. As far as I know, Fluent does not allow radiation through a solid region. I'll leave it to someone with more Fluent expertise to state otherwise.

Regards, Robin

Hi Apostolos,

my advice would be to review what most people are using for this application at the level you wish to impact. Check out the publications/conferences at the level you want to publish and see what everybody else is using. List off the specific features you need and compare on that basis. If everybody is using a certain code there probably is a reason.

A major issue, given that you are doing research work for a PhD, is what level of your own model development you can include in the code. CFX5 has this easy to input CFX expression language for simple stuff but the user Fortran is more for experts. Fluent has a wide range of UDF's that are tougher than CEL for the simple stuff but also work for complex model implementation.

Have a look at both codes if you can and make your own decisions.

Good luck,

Bak_Flow

Hi Robin, Hi Back_Flow

I would like to thank both of you and for your useful advises. If you find anything more please let me know

Thank you !!!!

Apostolos

The STAR-CD is good for modellind decribed problem. I have solve one similar.