Solver for compressible flow calculations
 

Hi,
In my work I am modeling a compressible flow in Fluent and I am wondering if I can use pressure density solver. In my model I have a time dependent flow where the Mach number could reach a value about 2. As its is a transient simulation I first try to run a model in steady state to have a good starting point for the transient analysis

• in steady state mode I have a Ma = 0.5 at inlet (i use pressure inlet boundary condition) and I use pressure based solver for calculations. The results I got are quite reasonable so it looks like the pressure based solver works well for this setup (beside that the fluent manual suggest to use pressure based solver to Ma <=0.3).
• Anyway, when I switch to transient calculations i expect an increase in Mach number in a model (for very short time) to values about 2. I tried to use a density based solver, but it has a huge problems with stability, convergence and results when a mach number and velocity in the domain increases.

So finally my question is: Do you have any experience from applying pressure based solver for high speed compressible flows in fluent? Can I look for reasonable results?

Both pressure and density based solver have the capability of calculating compressible high Mach number flows. If you want further advice, please provide details on your problem set up.

In early days of ansys, the density based solver was designed particularly for compressible flows. but now a day both solver works fine in both compressible and in compressible flows. But inherently sometimes density based solver yields better results than pressure based