CFD Industrial Approach

Content
•Background
•Development process
•Application of cfd in different sectors
Background – where CFD is applied

Primary Secondary Tertiary

• Agriculture • Industrial • Service
• Food processing, • Petrochemicals • IT
Refrigeration and • Design of pipes, • Energy
drying of food products Erosion , Chemical • Transport
• Design of ducts, nozzles, reactions, etc. • Finance, etc.
pumps, etc. • Pharmaceuticals
• Automobile
• Internal and external
flow & thermal
analysis
• Textile
Development process
Development process
where does CFD lies
Techniques to solve problem

Analytical Computational Physical

MatLab, Java,
Simulink, etc. 0D
MatLab,
1D Modelica,
Simulink, etc.

StarCCM+, OpenFoam,
Fluent, etc.
3D
where CFD is applied
What is CFD

Computational Fluid Dynamics

is a method by which one uses certain algorithms or other numerical formulas to analyze
the fluids' flow, heat and mass transfer, chemical reactions, and related phenomena.

•Conservation of mass
•Conservation of momentum
•Conservation of energy
•Conservation of species
•Effects of body forces

How these equations are solved?

•Domain is discretised into a finite set of control

Volumes
•Numerical equations are solved at each cell
How CFD works

Problem Identification
• Define goals
• Identify domain

Pre-Processing
• Geometry
• Mesh
• Physics
• Solver Settings

Solve
• Compute solution

Post Processing
• Examine results
Problem identification

External aerodynamic
simulation

Internal ventilation
simulation
Pre processing

• Physics

• Geometry

• Mesh
Solver settings

Define material properties

• Fluid Vehicle surface Outlet
• Solid
• Mixture Inlet

Select appropriate physical models

• Turbulence, combustion, multiphase, etc.
– Prescribe operating conditions
– Prescribe boundary conditions at all boundary
– Provide initial values or a previous solution
– Set up solver controls
– Set up amount of time.
– convergence monitors walls
Air Domain
(Box)
Mesh requirement

Convergence is reached when:

– Changes in solution variables from one iteration
to the next are negligible.
• Residuals provide a mechanism to help monitor this trend.
– Overall property conservation is achieved
• Imbalances measure global conservation
– Quantities of interest (e.g. drag, pressure drop) have reached
steady values.
where CFD is applied

Examine the results to review solution

and extract useful data
Visualization Tools can be used to answer
such questions as:
• What is the overall flow pattern?
• Is there separation?
• Are key flow features being resolved?
•Whether energy balance is happened?
Mesh Strategy

Size
•Flow feature should be adequately resolved.
•Avoid sudden change in mesh size.
•Set mesh size based on geometry complexity and physics to be
resolved.
•To resolve fully developed flow, extrude inlet and outlet by 10
times of diameter.

Quality
•Skewness should not be more than 0.8 to 0.9
•Adjacent cells should not have ‘size ratio’ greater than 20%.
Mesh prism layer calculation

Boundary layer calculation

boundary layer refers to the layer of fluid in the immediate vicinity of a bounding
surface where the effects of viscosity are significant.
Work flow

Solution Procedure
Fluent

Fluent
Example

Mixing of cold and hot water in a T-piece

Hot inlet (90 deg .C)

Outlet
Cold inlet (10 deg .C)

Output required is average and maximum temperature at outlet.

Background – where CFD is applied

Electronics cooling (Natural Convection flow)

Top

Bottom

Hot electronics component fitted to a The PCB is fitted into an enclosure

printed circuit board (PCB). which is open at the top and
bottom
75 W of thermal power is dissipated.
The source component volume is
0.11808x10-3 m3 (635,000 W/m3)
Background – where CFD is applied

Air inside compartment,

Incompressible ideal gas

Copper Sink

Heat source
Density = 1900 kg/m3; cp = 795 J/kg K;
Thermal Conductivity = 10 W/m K PCB Material
Density = 1250kg/m3;
cp = 1300 J/kg K;
conductivity 0.35 W/m K
Background – where CFD is applied

Material setting

Air Operating conditions

Background – where CFD is applied

Solution methods
pressure scheme to Body Force Weighted
Leave the remaining variables set to First Order Upwind.

Source term

Initialization
– Compute from inlet
– Set y-velocity to 0.1 m/s
– Click the Initialize button
Background – where CFD is applied
Background – where CFD is applied

Interpolation schemes for the convection term:

– First-Order Upwind – Easiest to converge, only first-order accurate.
– Power Law – More accurate than first-order for flows when Recell < 5 (typ. low
Re flows)
– Second-Order Upwind – Uses larger stencils for 2nd order accuracy, essential
with tri/tet mesh or when flow is not aligned with grid; convergence may be
slower.
– Monotone Upstream-Centered Schemes for Conservation Laws (MUSCL) –
Locally 3rd order convection discretisation scheme for unstructured meshes;
more accurate in predicting secondary flows, vortices, forces, etc.
– Quadratic Upwind Interpolation (QUICK) – Applies to quad/hex and hybrid
meshes, useful for rotating/swirling flows, 3rd-order accurate on uniform mesh.
Background – where CFD is applied

• Interpolation schemes for calculating cell-face pressures when using the

pressure-based solver in FLUENT are available as follows:
– Standard – The default scheme; reduced accuracy for flows exhibiting large
surface-normal pressure gradients near boundaries (but should not be used
when steep pressure changes are present in the flow – PRESTO! scheme
should be used instead.)
– PRESTO! – Use for highly swirling flows, flows involving steep pressure
gradients (porous media, fan model, etc.), or in strongly curved domains
– Linear – Use when other options result in convergence difficulties or
unphysical behavior
– Second-Order – Use for compressible flows; not to be used with porous
media, jump, fans, etc. or VOF/Mixture multiphase models
– Body Force Weighted – Use when body forces are large, e.g., high Ra natural
convection or highly swirling flows