Dear Sirs, I am an architect concerned with energy efficient building, and I am beginning studying CFD. I intend to use it for investigation on natural ventilation systems. I would like to know what would be the minimum hardware required to start with CFD, and what would be a mid-suitable to enable some further research. Please any suggestions are welcome. Thank you,

Santiago L. Torres tiago@sminter.com.ar

Hello,

The hardware really depends on the size of the model you wish to generate. A basic guide is the following;

Meshing / Grid Generation - 64 Megs of RAM per million cells (based on ICEM CFD HEXA/TETRA)

Solving - 1 Gig of RAM per million cells

Storage - as much hard disk space as you can afford (most CFD users on this list will know of storage problems!)

The type of machine really depends on your budget, I always use Silicon Graphics but HPs and SUNS may be worth looking at.

regards

Dave Minns

Hello,

I agree completely with Dave, just want to add cpu speed is a direct function of your patience and problem size, i.e. get the fastest you can afford. We run SGI's as well and their prices are dropping...

Good luck, Erich

200,000 cells are definitely enough for my object, so I wonder if I can run CFD in a PC with an acceptable speed, if so, what is the requirement for harddrive, RAM for best performance? Thanks for you experts.

I hope this information may help:

it is possible to reach the solution of 12 dependent variables using total 200 000 control volumes for a complete modeling of a furnace with Pentium Pro processor,256 Mb RAM, 2 CPU on Windows NT and run 3 differentcase at the same time.

N. Kayakol

My advice is to research the available software packages that would be able to generate solutions to your satisfaction and then purchase the hardware required. I you are lucky, you may find a package that can run on your PC with little or no upgrading. I believe FLOVENT from Flomerics is specifically tailored for ventilation simulations in buildings. I suggest that you start by talking with an engineer there to see if they can meet your needs.

Thank you for your answers. They've been great help!

S. L. Torres

For a 2-D RANS using the Spalart-Allaras(sp?)turb model with 20,000 grid points, a PC with 450Mhz cpu, take about 15mins for 3000 iterations.