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CFD Software: FLOW-3D
FLOW-3D CFD Software Overview
FLOW-3D is a powerful and highly-accurate computational fluid dynamics software that gives engineers valuable insight into many physical flow processes. With special capabilities for accurately predicting free-surface flows, FLOW-3D is the ideal CFD software to use in your design phase as well as in improving production processes.
FLOW-3D is an all-inclusive package. No special additional modules for meshing or post-processing are needed. An integrated graphical user interface ties everything together, from problem setup to post-processing. For a description of key features in our latest FLOW-3D release, Version 9.4, go to the What's New in 9.4 section.
FLOW-3D Features List
*NEW* v9.4 features are listed in red
Meshing & Geometry:
- Structured finite difference grid
- Multi-Block Gridding with embedded or linked blocks
- Fractional areas/volumes (FAVOR™) for efficient and accurate geometry definition
- Free gridding
- Solids Modeler
- Import most CAD files
Flow Type Options:
- Internal, external and free-surface flows
- Three, two or one dimensional problems
- Transient flows
- Cartesian or cylindrical coordinates
- Inviscid, viscous laminar and turbulent flows
- Multiple scalar species
- Non-inertial reference frames
- Two-phase flows
- Heat transfer with phase change
- Saturated and unsaturated porous media
Flow Definition Options:
- General initial conditions
- Boundary conditions
- Symmetry
- Rigid walls
- Continuative
- Periodic
- Specified pressure
- Specified velocit
- Outflow
- Grid overlay
- Hydrostatic
- Restart previous simulation
- Continuation of a simulation
- Overlay data from a previous simulation
- Add, delete or change model parameters
Numerical Modeling Options:
- Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) method for fluid interfaces--TruVOF
- Fractional areas/volumes (FAVOR™) for efficient geometry definition
- First, second or third order advection
- Sharp fluid interface tracking
- Implicit or explicit modeling options
- Point, line relaxation and GMRES pressure solvers
- User-defined variables, subroutines and output
- Utilities for runtime interaction during execution
Fluid Modeling Options:
- One incompressible fluid – confined or with free surfaces
- Two incompressible fluids – miscible or with sharp interfaces
- Compressible fluid – subsonic, transonic, supersonic
- Stratified fluid
- Acoustic phenomena
- Mass particles with variable density or diameter
Thermal Modeling Options:
- Temperature-dependent material properties
- Natural convection
- Forced convection
- Fluid and solid conduction
- Fluid-solid heat transfer
- Conduction
- Specified heat flux
- Specified temperature
- Heat transfer to voids from fluid/obstacles
- Distributed energy sources/sinks in fluids or solids
- Radiation by emissivity
- Viscous heating
Physical Modeling Options:
- Multi-species scour deposition & bedload transport
- Temperature-dependent material properties
- Cavitation
- Phase change (liquid-vapor, liquid-solid & liquid-gas)
- Surface tension
- Thermocapillary effects
- Wall adhesion
- Wall roughness
- Vapor & gas bubbles
- Solidification & melting (heat-of-transformation table)
- Mass/momentum/energy sources
- Distributed mass/energy sources
- Shear, density and temperature-dependent viscosity
- Thixotropic viscosity
- Elastic stress
- Electric field
- Dielectric phenomena
- Electro-osmosis
- Electrostatic particles
- Electro-mechanical effects
- Joule heating
- Air entrainment
- Molecular and turbulent diffusion
Special Physical Models:
- Tethered moving objects (springs & ropes)
- General moving objects with 6 degrees of freedom--user specified motion or fully-coupled with rigid body motion
- Rotating/spinning obstacles
- Porous baffles & obstacles with linear and quadratic flow losses
- Collision model
Metal Casting Models:
- Core gas generation
- Solidification shrinkage with interdendritic feeding
- Temperature-dependent material properties
- Solidification/melting (heat-of-transformation table)
- Binary segregation during solidification
- Solid-fraction dependent latent heat release
- Thermal die cycling
- Defect tracking
- Cavitation potential model
- Lost-Foam casting model
- Semi-solid material models
- Moisture in sand molds
- Shot sleeves
- Back pressure and vents
- Sand core blowing
Turbulence Models:
- Prandtl mixing length
- One-equation transport
- Two-equation k-ε transport
- RNG (renormalized group theory)
- Large eddy simulation
Porous Media Models:
- Variable porosity
- Directional porosity
- General flow losses (linear and quadratic)
- Capillary pressure
- Unsaturated flow
- Heat transfer in porous media
Two-phase and Two-component Models:
- Liquid/liquid and gas/liquid interfaces
- Two-fluid mixtures
- One compressible fluid with a dispersed incompressible component
- Two-component drift-flux
- Phase transformations for gas-liquid and liquid-solid
- Adiabatic bubbles
- Bubbles with phase change
- Continuum fluid with discrete particles
- Scalar transport
Discrete Particle Models:
- Massless marker particles
- Mass particles of variable size/mass
- Linear and quadratic fluid-dynamic drag
- Monte-Carlo diffusion
- Particle-Fluid momentum coupling
- Coefficient of restitution or sticky particles
- Point or volumetric particle sources
- Charged particles
- Probe particles
Shallow Flow Models:
- Shallow-water model
- General topography
- Wetting and drying
- Wind shear
- Ground roughness effects
Chemistry Models:
- Stiff equation solver for chemical rate equations
- Stationary or advected species
Automatic Features:
- Automatic termination based on user-defined criteria
- Mesh and initial
condition generators
- Time-step control for accuracy and stability
- Automatic limited compressibility
- Convergence and relaxation levels determined by FLOW-3D
- Mentor help to optimize efficiency
Options for Coupling with Other Programs:
- Geometry input from Stereolithography (STL) files--binary or ASCII
- Geometry input from ANSYS or I’DEAS tetrahedral data
- Geometry input from ANSYS or I’DEAS tetrahedral data
- Direct interfaces with Tecplot®, EnSight®, and FieldView® data
- Output for PLOT3D-compatible visualization programs
- Neutral file output
- Extensive customization tools
- Topgraphic data
Data Processing Options:
- Automatic or custom graph requests
- Interactive OpenGL-based graphics
- Color or B/W vector, contour, 3D surface and particle plots
- Moving history and probe data
- Force and momentum computations
- Animation generation
- PostScript, JPEG and Bitmap output
- Streamlines
- STL geometry viewer
Multi-Processor Computing:
- Shared memory computers
- Distributed memory clusters