Ansys has released the latest version of its computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, Fluent 6.3. New capabilities have been added that broaden its applicability to a widening range of industrial processes. It also delivers important core numerical enhancements that offer improved accuracy, efficiency and robustness. In all, more than 100 new features are available, enhancing the software's capabilities in many areas, including moving mesh, reacting flows and multiphase flows.
The main focus of this release is on core solver improvements. A pressure- based coupled solver joins the existing solver options and improves solution efficiency as well as convergence and robustness for many cases. Polyhedral meshes, new in Fluent 6.3 software, allow the flexibility of an unstructured mesh to be applied to complex geometries without the overhead associated with a large tetrahedral mesh. The automatic nature of the techniques used to create polyhedral meshes saves the user time, and, since a polyhedral mesh contains many fewer cells than the corresponding tetrahedral mesh, convergence is faster. HPC customers can also benefit from running Fluent6.3 on 64-bit Windows platforms such as Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.
Dynamic mesh capabilities for modelling moving objects, such as pistons and valves in IC engines and impellers in baffled mixing tanks, can now be applied to a series of related steady-state simulations, reducing the amount of time that a user spends on pre-processing. Additional new functionality adds flexibility for simulating complex object motion. Reacting flow simulations benefit from new models for slow chemistry and micromixing. Emissions modelling is more comprehensive through the addition of new SOx and NOx modelling capabilities.
Multiphase modelling continues to be an area of focus: Fluent 6.3 offers improvements to the accuracy of transient multiphase solutions as well as enhancements that extend the regimes in which multiphase models can be applied.
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