Using CFX for solid thermal analysis (no flow modelling)
 

Dear experts,

My research includes doing a solid thermal analysis, but the institute I am working with has a CFX license only - no Ansys Mechanical licenses are available.

The colleagues are pointing out that as CFX is capable of doing a coupled thermal analysis, then it should be definitely possible to do a simpler solid analysis - although no one has done it so far.

I have looked at a heating coil tutorial (to get an idea of what is needed), from which I inferred that if I omit the fluid domain and retain the solid domain, then (provided that I specify additional thermal boundary conditions) it will do the job.

However, I am not certain if something I will get will be a correct solution, so I would like to ask more experienced people if there are any pitfalls or limitations I need to be aware of.

In my case, one of the examples I have to tackle with is the aerofoil with experimentally obtained heat transfer coefficients and the known temperature of the surrounding fluid (the flow of which we do not want to model). We also know the temperature inside the hollow aerofoil. What we want is the temperature distribution in the solid body of an aerofoil.

Looking forward to your answers,
Maksim

Your inference is correct. CFX can model solid only domains just fine, I have done it many times.

Your aerofoil temperature model will be possible.