Hi,

I work in a company where we want to model ventilation and fires in large buildings with CFD. I know there are several tools on the market like Airpak, Flovent, Flair, ... What are your experiences with these programs, what do you recommend?

Best regards, Peter

Hello Peter,

Any of these programs will do the job just fine in my experience. (I have used both Airpak and Flair for fire simulations.) What you have to ask yourself is what you want to make simulations for and therefore how accurate these simulations have to be, as well as what capabilities you would expect such a program to have. Do you need vapour droplet evaporation from sprinklers? Once you know exactly what you are going to use the program for, ask the supplier of different programs whether their program posesses these capabilities.

If you are not an experienced user of CFD, I highly recommend you to take at least course given by the producers of your program.

Kind Regards, Wiebe.

Hello Wiebe,

Thanks for your reply. An important point is the ability to make geometries quickly. We will not use vapour droplet evaporation. It is important to model fires adequately. This means ao that radiation should be modelled well. Does this give a certain program any advantage? I have quite some experience using Fluent.

Best regards, Peter

Hello Peter,

In that case, make sure that the program you choose is able to create a reasonable grid. (In my experience making a correct grid will take up at least as much time as defining the geometry)

Last time I worked with Flair (about 2 years ago), it still had some issues with defining the grid in complex geometries, although they were working on that. Defining geometries in airpak is just as simple as in Flair, but meshing is much easier.

If you have experience using fluent, I see no reason for you to start learning another package (except for lower expenses of course.)

Kind regards, Wiebe.