[DRoam]

At my company, we have been trying for weeks to use the Motion/Rotating Region functionality of Autodesk CFD to simulate centrifugal fans that we regularly use (similar to this: Centrifugal Fan)

We have three goals from these simulations:

1. Use CFD to generate a fan curve for one or more of our centrifugal fans, both in the manufacturer's housing and in our own equipment.
2. Compare these to the manufacturer-supplied fan curves. If they are different, continue to use CFD on a regular basis to develop accurate fan curves for the fans we use within the equipment they are in.
3. Perform various tests to gain more insight into the performance of these fans (such as the effect of inlet length on efficiency, cavitation, etc.)

So far this has proven to be an extremely difficult process with Autodesk CFD. It can be done, but it's looking like each time we want to simulate a different fan or a different scenario, it’s going to be a considerable project that will take days to weeks of trial and error (running and re-running simulations with different inputs) to finally find a setup that works--and even then the results might be within a fairly large margin of error.

All that said, we are wondering if there might be another software out there that's better suited for this kind of analysis. That's the gist of this post. Can anyone recommend another software that is ideal for rotating geometry simulations--a software that can simulate our fans and give us detailed but accurate results without a lot of technical hassle and in a reasonable amount of time (a few days at most for any given virtual test)?

Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!