[Frakkel79]

Hello all,

I have been looking into using different CFD tools for analysis of control boxes which has been drawn in Catia. At the moment we use Catia V5 but are planning to go over to Catia V6 in the not so far away future. The control boxes has some electronics component and a motor. There are some heat dissipated in the components and I need to know how hot it becomes at different places.

The first tool I used was ICEPAK, here I had to export the file from Catia into a STEP fil. This was not very succesful due to geometry issues. Then I tried to import the catpart directly in Ansys designmodeler. Still there were some issues but it seems it was possible. In either case alot of work has to be done, and feedback to the design engineers become long.

Therefore I started to look for other possibilities. Now I have been using FloEFD which seems to be a good module for Catia. This can take the original geometry and solve for thermal and humidity problems. I have been supprised by using FloEFD how easy it is to use the original CAD structure from Catia to give good/fast results which results in a faster feedback to the design engineers. I like the fact that it is relatively easy to make parametric analysis which is what I need. The main issue I have with FloEFD is that is not supported in Catia V6 yet.

Therefor I have done some more research and now I have find another solution. Apparently Dassault system has a solution. They have something called Simulia. Here they write that they can do thermal simulation. At the moment I dont have any experience with this solution.

My question is to you guys if you can advice or newbie into the CFD world which pro and cons there are with the different solutions.

Thankyou in advance