Which CFD package to buy?
 

Hi Everybody,

My company who produces heavy-duty industrial air compressor is planning to buy a CFD software. I am given the task to do some research and figure out which software is worth buying. I got hired only a month ago and I do not have great background in centrifugal air compressors, but I can definitely gather more info as required. So far my experience has been in algorithm development mainly FVM, and not in industrial CFD. Two candidates are being considered: Ansys CFX and Ansys Fluent. We already have Ansys workbench for mechanical analysis and Autodesk Inventor is regularly used for 3D modeling. Since, we already have one Ansys product, we are more inclined to buy Ansys CFD package for ease of compatibility and portability.

From my rambling on the Internet, I am getting a feeling that Ansys CFX is preferred in the case of turbomachinery compared to Fluent. By I am not sure why? What're the technical reasons?

www.mesco.com.pl/produkty/ansys/cfx_vs_fluent.pdf has pretty good comparison chart.

Even Ansys website talks about CFX while describing what solutions they can provide based on type of industry.

http://www.ansys.com/industries/turbomachinery.asp

Look at the special features. http://www.ansys.com/industries/tm-geometry.asp

How about Ansys Multiphysics?

Let me know your comments.

Thanks, Vishal

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

Hello Vishal: As I have heard and seen many work flow on compressor modeling and rotary flow dynamics, AVL-FIRE is well known CFD software capable of handling it. Fluent/Ansys certainly are leaders in the market. but I guess if you looking for specifics, take a look at AVL - FIRE and related products.

-- CFDtoy

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

why u want only ansys. they r too expensive n not much uselful.

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

Hi Vishal

It is good to hear from you that you take the opinon of others in taking the best for your sort of industry.

My suggestion to you is eveluate the commercial tools available in the market and then take a call on this as i have heard that CFX and Fluent is from the same company that is ANSYS. And which tool they are developing for the loong term and which one they will be not so be carefull to select the same.

And the industry you are into heavy-duty industrial air compressor and you can also look into STAR CD or STAR CCM+ from an company called CD-ADAPCO from UK. They clame that they have some specilised tools to address these type of industries.

So look for the best and be cautious in the selection.

All the Best

Karthik +91-9866176204

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

based on your apparent limited exposure to CFD software I would highly recommend looking at a more engineering based tool like EFD from Flomerics, rather than the academic researchie type other tools mentioned. I was looking for a code 12 months ago and the level of expertise needed to run some of the 'heavy weight' tools like Fluent and Star was scary. I only need to use the software every copule of months and the worry with these other tools was remembering where everything was. I find EFD really easy to use and it gives fast results, with excellent results that correlated to my physical test results (spining impellers)- just what I needed.

Ted

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

I guess you have never used star-ccm+

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

Ted's message was posted from Flomerics. Please don't use the forums to try to market your products Ted! When you post something related to your products please give your affiliation so that everyone knows that you are a Flomerics employee! Otherwise these forums will quickly be filled with hidden advertising.

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

Go for OpenFOAM! Its free and wicked. Its much better than Fluent or CFX. It has much more features than any of the commercial CFD codes. In terms of accuracy its second to none. www.openfoam.org, download and enjoy.

kasim

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

As an initial step into CFD it may certainly make sense for you to use a product from ANSYS as it is your tool for structural analysis. Certainly that is why ANSYS bought CFX and then FLUENT.

I beleive you will find CFX is better integrated into workbench as it has been part of Ansys far longer.

If you look at the history of CFX, it absorbed a code/company called TASCFLOW, which was a large CFD company whose main customer base was the turbo machinary community. Thus that tool had lots of validation and specialized computational tools for rotating machinery. I believe they where the first to solve for rothalpy rather than simply enthalpy in the energy equation.

That said, the historic advantage of the CFX / Tascflow solver may not be so strong anymore.

Depending on your anticipated budget, you may be able to get the various CFD companies to do some demonstration problems on your specific designs.

Remember there is more to CFD than just a solver. Gridding and post processing tools, memory usage, computation time, user interfaces, all need to be evaluated with respect to the engineering problems you need to solve.

Good Luck - Andy R

Re: Which CFD package to buy?
 

OpenFOAM has its disadvantage in terms of gridding but this can be adjusted by buying any good software for meshing. With respect to other aspects that Andy mentioned above i believe OpenFOAM is far superior than other commercial codes.

kasim