Surface mesh-generated for underhood parts of a Corvette model Fast, Robust, Pipelined Mesh Operations One way to achieve this is with the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ Surface Wrapper tool, which creates a geometric representation of the model by “shrink-wrapping” a high-resolution triangulated surface on the complex aspects of the geometry. If doing a VTM analysis on our Corvette model, the entire car along with the ambient air surrounding the car can be easily generated with our surface wrapper technology in just a few clicks. The goal of using the surface wrapper is to prevent leakage into the main cabin, avoid geometry issues (missing faces, gaps, intersecting parts), capture the original geometry features, and make sure there is no artificial intersection between parts. Contact prevention, Gap closure, and Surface Wrapper Defeature options provide more controls to capture enough data from geometry. You need to go from CAD-to-Solution rapidly in order to study and produce the best designs.
#STAR CCM SOFTWARE MANUAL#
In a model with a few parts, CAD preparation involves cleaning up the dirty geometry, unite the parts, and extract the fluid volume manually without any problem. The same workflow, however, cannot be used to handle a full vehicle or a ship model a manual geometry preparation of model with thousands of parts equates to weeks or months of tedious work, putting serious speed limits on product development. Seeing perfect geometry is equivalent to seeing a flying unicorn!
Last year during a Simcenter Conference training session called “Meshing made Easy,” attended by simulation engineers from around the world, the trainer asked the question, “Have you ever seen perfect geometry?” Not a single attendant raised their hand – no one in the room was confident enough to say that they had ever gotten perfect geometry that was simulation-ready. Reduce Turnaround Time from Weeks to Hours The image below shows the re-organized hierarchy tree for parts. Use the tags as an input in filters or the query-based selection in the mesh operation pipeline. Using the filter to create a query-based selection makes it possible to find and select objects in the simulation tree without having to do it manually, producing more accurate results in a fraction of the time.īefore and after organizing complex models for CFD simulationĪfter organizing the model using tags and groups, the model’s original count of 15,000 parts has been reduced to around 8,000 for the VTM simulation.Tag the parts to create a new grouping without altering the original imported hierarchy (so don’t be afraid to try it out). Groupings can be made based on qualities like ‘material’ or solid part or exterior parts of the car: for example, all the plastic parts in the powertrain can be grouped and combined as a single part. This allows you to organize and reduce the number of parts used as input to fluid regions.
Manually searching for and organizing the parts can involve thousands of clicks, miles of mouse travel, and several units of your favorite caffeinated beverage to get the job done.įortunately, several capabilities exist to simplify the job, including tags, filters, and query-based selections in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. These allow you to more efficiently organize large complex assemblies and ultimately automate the mesh pipeline. The Corvette model shown below has more than 15,000 parts, not all of which are needed for the simulation. Easily Organize Complex Models for Simulation In CFD modeling, there are three key ways in which Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can help you handle complex geometries in your simulation. Let us look at one of the most complex systems and CFD simulations in the world – Vehicle Thermal Management (VTM) for a full passenger car, in this case the formidable Corvette. Kawasaki Motors provides one example of how to work on a complex assembly that was improved with a streamlined CFD workflow. To address the problem of reducing design turnaround time, the team working on the Kawasaki Ninja H2R/H2 turned to Simcenter STAR-CCM+ for their solution: with tools like filters, automated mesh pipeline, and the surface wrapper, they were able to cut down their CAD-to-Solution time by 75% and achieve 40% improvement in radiator ventilation flow for cooling the engine and lower front-wheel lift. Most notably, they reduced overall manual CAD cleanup time by 85% with surface wrapping tools– a tool that simplified the entire workflow. What does this mean for people tackling the ever-growing system complexity required to meet the demands of tomorrow? Counterintuitively, in almost any domain, complexity must be mastered through simplicity: complex problems need to be broken down into a set of elegant, robust principles and parts. It’s the same for CFD geometry preparation with thousands of complex parts: simplifying the workflow is key. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo da Vinci