How to model a pipe with obstructions in it
 

Hi all,

I'm trying to model the flow inside a pipe with obstacles in it in order to determine the forces exerted on the obstacles due to the flow. I've looked through the tutorials and they seem to use the solid geometry to represent the cavity that the fluid flows through. So a simple pipe would be modelled using a solid cylinder. However, if I want obstacles in the pipe, I either have to model them as solids inside the pipe solid (which doesn't work as ANSYS considers it as just one solid), or I have to cut out the obstructions from the pipe solid. I've tried this and although it seems to work, but I can't view the faces inside the solid when I create a Stress map of the model. Am I doing this right? (I'm using ANSYS 13 Workbench).

Happy 2011!

--Amr

You can create an enclosure or fill to create a fluid body out of the region between the solids.

You only need the one fluid body to get the forces exerted on the solids (just pressure over area).

However, if you want stresses, then you are talking about 1 way FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction). This is pretty easy to do in WB, you just need to drop a structural system onto the results of the fluid system and then link the pressures from the CFD as input loads into the Structural. It can use the same intial model but can use a separate mesh for the structural portion, etc. WB usually takes care of all the details.

I suggest finding one of the tutorials about one way FSI on the customer portal.

Thanks for your reply Simon,

I'll play some more with the simulation and if I continue to run into problems, I'll post again.

--Amr

Hello,

I want to analyze the flow inside the pipe. I made a solid cylinder in Design modeler and mesh it. But the problem is that how can i define inside as a fluid domain?

I solved this solid in CFX but it gave me very low mass flow rate, that means it is not treating as a hollow.

Kindly hel me out how can i treat it as a fluid or is there any tutorila in design modeler for flow inside pipe pls let me know.

What's in a name?
 

If it meshed the region, then the solver can treat it as Fluid or Solid regardless of the name... However, if you want to control the name, this movie on named selections may help... I get to volumes at the very end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Z2v8geroQ

You can also click on a body and change it from a solid to a fluid in DM (look at the bottom of the details panel when the body is selected). I suppose this is worth doing if you are using Workbench to setup a real FSI because it can automatically break up where each body is solved, but it doesn't really matter if you are just sending the mesh to a CFD solver... Of course you mean for the mesh to be a fluid... The solver won't care about the name. Just apply fluid properties to the "SOLID" part.

You low mass flow issue is due to your boundary conditions... not weather the geometry is labeled as a fluid or solid...

Details of Body
 

In DM, use the body selection tool (Green Cube in the top row of icons) and select the body in the screen or tree. At the bottom of the details panel (bottom left) there is a pull down to change it from Solid (default) to Fluid...

Details of Body
 

In DM, use the body selection tool (Green Cube in the top row of icons) and select the body in the screen or tree. At the bottom of the details panel (bottom left) there is a pull down to change it from Solid (default) to Fluid...
Attachment 6058

Thank you very much. It works.

Regards,

Hello,

I have one more question,

I did an airfoil in iCEM CFD and want to solve in CFX but when i trandformed it in CFX it takes automatically thickness, and consider the outer side as a solid instead of fluid.

Is there any other way to solve this ICEM 2D geometry in CFX?

Anyother format of importing file inorder todon't chnage nature of geometry.

Beast Regards,

Which one is different, can't we all just get along
 

CFX always represents a 2D model as a thin layer of 3D hexas... Basically it is really a 2.5D model.

I usually just export the mesh from ICEM CFD as a 2D Fluent mesh (*.msh) and read that into CFX. While reading in the *.msh file, CFX automatically extrudes it into a format that it can use.

Don't worry about it, the solution will be similar to what Fluent would give on a 2D model. Both are just representative slices of the real problem expressed in different ways.