Which software would be best for analysing fluid flow through a pipe at a micro scale
 

Hi everyone.

First of all, apologies if I have posted in the incorrect section - please move this thread to the correct section.

If you were to have a choice of Ansys, Star CCM+, Open Foam and Phoenics, which software would you choose to undertake flow analysis? Would you also provide me with reasons. I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks everyone!

I don't know anything about Phoenics.

As a general purpose tool, Star-CCM+ and Fluent are nearly identical at the solver level (even algorithms). If you have specific needs there may be a situation where Star-CCM has something that Fluent does not and vice versa. In terms of capabilities, OpenFOAM is also just about as good as Star-CCM & Fluent but it doesn't have the entire gamut of options available in Star-CCM/Fluent (it doesn't have as many models compared to Star-CCM and Fluent). But really to get a solution you only need 1 working set of models.

It's like going into the department store and deciding what toilet paper you want to buy. They all do the same thing, but personal considerations tend to make you prefer one over the other (number of ply, softness, roughness, cost, texture, pretty pictures, ease of tearing sheets, absorption, heck even the packaging, etc).