Hey all,

To give you a little bit of an idea about what it is for: I have a volume with electrical components and I need to determine how long it would take any smoke to get from the fire inside the volume to the exhaust fan where the smoke detector is. I was wondering if Fluent had the capability to make real-time movies; or at least find time required for flow to get from one location to another inside the CV. I know how to make standard animations but it seems that these are always depicted at a constant speed. Thanks a bunch for you help, Brice

You could use the pathline function, releasing the particles from where you want and coloring the particles by time. Getting numerical statistics would be more difficult - you could use the DPM model with neutrally bouyant particles.

Fluent's ability to make animation files of particles is a bit weak, in my opinion. You can use the scene animation to make a movie of particle flows from one place to another. Also, you can animate the particles on the screen and then use simple third-party software to make a movie via screen capture - at least in Windows.

Allan, Thanks a lot; it did the trick!