FloEFD’s automatic uniform mesh built over a surface improves user experience. Image courtesy of Mentor Graphics.
Perhaps the biggest time saver for engineers is FloEFD’s new meshing capabilities. The amount of time users spend fixing their geometry can be reduced considerably as FloEFD will fill in the gaps within the mesh, making it “watertight.” In fact, Mentor reports that with a single click, users will be able to create a multilevel, uniform mesh around a body or surface or their models.
“Meshing the model can be one of the most time consuming parts of preparing a model for simulation,” said Michelle Boucher, vice president of research for engineering software at Tech-Clarity, in her FloEFD webinar with ENGINEERING.com. “It has an impact on the accuracy of the analysis as well as the process time of the analysis. Given how time consuming it is and how important it is, top performers are 58 percent more likely to view it as something very valuable in a simulation solution.”
As a result, FloEFD’s improvements for automated meshing could help convince top performing companies—or those aiming to become a top performing company—to consider the CFD tool for their operation. To further help this cause, FloEFD also provides a mesh preview tool that promises to save an engineer’s time and improve the accuracy of these meshes.
"The new improvements in the definition of the mesh settings are an enormous help, especially for our external aerodynamics simulation cases," stated Dr. Geraldo Olivares, senior research scientist and director at the National Institute for Aviation Research, Wichita State University. “The ability to define layers of refinements, set a specific cell size and define local regions based on basic geometric objects helps us save time.”
FloEFD has also improved its transient solver. Simulations that are dominated by high pressure, such as water hammering or filling and emptying a tank, will now be solved more quickly and with more accuracy.
Additionally, FloEFD has improved interfaces to import EDA Exploratory data analysis models and Abaqus. For EDA, FloEFD will be able to import the IDF (intermediate distribution frame) or ODB++ data from Mentor Graphics’ Xpedition. This will save an engineer’s time, as they no longer have to recreate the EDA model. As for the interface for Abaqus, this will allow users to export loads and pressure data to Abaqus to help analysts looking to perform in-depth stress analysis.Other improvements include:
- Variable refractive indexes based on wavelength and temperature for automotive lighting
- Ray visualization for radiation models to assess overheating equipment
- Calculation manager to keep track of running projects and the project queue
For those interested in FloEFD, they can access the simulation software as a standalone or CAD-embedded tool in Creo, CATIA V5 and Siemens NX.
For more information, see the Mentor Graphics website.