tracking data with respect to time
 

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to tell Fluent (whether it's in the batch job input file or in the case file) to track certain data points with time so that, when it outputs a data file, it will give you the time history of that plot. Currently, to track instantaneous data (basically to see if the data is converging to a steady value), I'm having Fluent output data files at each time step. The problem is that each of these data files is huge and carries much more information than I really need. I'm really just looking for the mean velocity along the centerline as a function of time, and it seems like there should be a better way to do this than the way I'm doing it now. If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.

Thanks! Tucker

Re: tracking data with respect to time
 

Hello!

I think you could do this through a UDF which you hook on as an EXECUTE_AT_END function. That means it will be executed once at the end of each time step. You could have it write a line with your value to a text-file, for example. Not sure of the exact syntax right now, though.

/Henrik

Re: tracking data with respect to time
 

Have you looked at the monitor options? You can monitor most of the flow properties by creating a point (Surface->Point) or using an existing curve or surface and monitoring the flow properties there (Solve->Monitors->Surface Integral).

Hope this helps, and good luck, Jason