Warning: surface area for component 1 is zero
 

Hello!

I'm a newbie in Flow-3D and CFD in general. I'm trying to simulate a compressible supersonic air flow around a solid 3-D [almost] axisymmetric body. Despite that the Materialise Magics shows a non-zero surface area of the mesh (the STL-file), the Flow-3D preprocessor issues the warning "surface area for component 1 is zero". I tried this again with a simpler mesh but the result is the same. Perhaps that's why the simulation ends in just a couple of seconds with a zero result (nothing seen in the image but the coordinate system and a colour palette). I've assigned a material for the body but had I forgotten to assign a physical property for the surface so that Flow-3D considers it real?

I'll be very grateful if experienced users can help me get the desired image of the oblique shock wave cone. The input and mesh files are at 4dos.hit.bg/flow-3d.zip

Thank you very much for your help!

As you already probably figured out, the surface area of a component is not a given property but is computed automatically by the preprocessor and output as a diagnostic. A zero surface area usually means that the component is not properly resolved or placed in the mesh. For example, it could be outside the computational domain, or the domain is too small (which could be the case when the units in the STL data and mesh data are different).

One way to double check all that is to look at it in the GUI's Meshing&Geometry window.