Hallo, has someone experience with Fluent and PowerFlow for external aerodynamic smulations with high Reynolds number? Wich one is more reliable?

Which industry? Auto or aero?

Fluent and PowerFLOW are the dominant players in the auto industry for external aero. These codes displaced Star some years ago as the leader for this application and adapco has failed to date to recover the market on this one.

For race cars, F1 for example, PowerFLOW is unheard off. The transient only calculations of PowerFLOW make it difficult to fit in the two week between races improvement cycle. STAR and Fluent compete in this market. PowerFLOW also has some trouble with shear flows and wings making the results suspect on race cars.

Fluent does very well in external aero in the aerospace market. adapco is pushing STAR-CCM+ in this market as well.

Another factor is price. How big is your budget. PowerFLOW is expensive. I have seen 50K per processor per year. Fluent cost somewhat less and argue your case well and adapco will undercut Fluent to get the market position and your business.

Accuracy of results, to be honest there is not much in it between Fluent, PowerFLOW and Star. Nothing to get concerned over. Various manufacturers have run a benchmark over the years and all score well on accuracy.

Ease of use and a complete process from CAD to CFD results has become important in external aero. Fluent and PowerFLOW can deliver a complete integrated process for this application. adapco less so because pro-am dumps you with some bad cells you have to fiddle around with before you can run the model. Vendors that can deliver an integrated process have a stable methodology for producing reliable results for this application.

There are other niche codes to consider if you can be bothered.

Call the various vendors and start a project to determine for yourself which process feels good for you.

Regards