What do I do when
 

I am not able to model a rotating (non-stationary) fluid domain? The geometry of my propeller won't allow it and just using the fill command (with the subtract Boolean operation) and solid-fluid interface (to stationary fluid around the propeller) won't work.

CFX supports rotating frames of reference. That is what all the people talking about turbo machinery models are using. But solids in rotating frames has only been supported in V14 I think. Earlier versions do not support it.

Why do you want to use a solid-fluid interface? Are you modelling heat transfer in the propeller? If you are not modelling heat transfer then you do not need to model the solid.

The propeller device is solid, because I am not able to build a rotating reference frame of fluid around it. The geometry doesn't allow it I don't think. Do I need a rotating reference frame? Can't I just rotate the solid inside of stationary fluid?

Immersed Solid fails too - weird streamlines..

Have you done the CFX tutorials on turbomachinery and other rotating frames of reference simulations? That will show you how to step this sort of thing up.

It looks like I need to perform a rotating moving mesh for this... But I cannot find any tutorials online.

You are modeling a propeller? I am sure there are many ways to model this, but a moving mesh is not an efficient choice to make. As ghurrocks said, a rotating frame of reference is the right choice and there is no reason to mesh the solid if you are just doing a fluid dynamics analysis. Moving the solid inside a stationary fluid will just be more costly computationally and won't give any better results.

So do I do a subtract boolean of the fill? I am not understanding how many parts I need for that.

There are plenty of tutorials which come with CFX which describe how to do this. You can get to them from the CFX documentation, in the tutorials manual.

I cannot use a rotating reference frame. This is not an axial propeller.

What sort of propeller is it then? Can you post an image?

Hehe that is my problem it is intellectual property :(

We are not going to be able to help you much until we have some idea of what you are modelling. Reduce it down to a simple model which shows the key motion but does not cause IP issues. Or point us to a public-domain thing which is close.

***************************

Still looks like a rotating frames of reference simulation to me. Just that the axis of rotation is not aligned with the flow. You can define the rotation axis to be any vector, so it will handle this.

Hmm I think I see it now. Do I just create a spherical rotating frame? Instead of a cylinder like in the tutorials.

A RFR can only have one axis and it cannot change. But it can be anywhere in any direction.

So if your gizmo only rotates about one axis then use RFR. If it rotates about 2 axes you need to do this as a moving mesh or immersed solids model and the accuracy will reduce and run time will be FAR longer.

I can only see "***************************" as an answer from Orb, what's the geometry?:confused:

I think he removed the post after I had looked at it. I suspect he does not want to publicise his idea too much.