I have been doing searches for my class. We are making an Electrathon class vechile and would like to test the vehicle concepts for areodynamics without actually building the models.

Does anybody know the location of a CFD program (or just a simple wind tunnell simulation, heat dynimcs are not needed) that is low cost, at least to educators?

Help is greatly appreceated.

Thank you in advance.

(1). Even for flow over a simple airfoil, the current state of the art of turbulence modeling in CFD is still not capable of predicting the flow separation and the drag accurately. (2). For a 3-D body vehicle, it requires a lot of mesh points or cells to model the flow field in order to get a meaningful answer. In this case, you are talking about millions of cells. (3). So, even if you can get hold of a very good code and a powerful computer, the drag prediction for a 3-D vehicle is still in the research stage.

Ok...

How about not necessaraly a DRAG prediction, but at least an airflow visualization program. I know that they are out there, I just have not been able to find one that is at a low cost.

Stephen,

Take a glance at:

www.flexpde.com

Download a free program in which you can construct small problems yourself. Accuracy? Don't ask. Use at your own risk.

Good luck, Astrid

try http://capella.colorado.edu/~laney there's a list of CFD codes there that you can obtain at relatively low cost or free. some of these are big (!) research type codes from NASA etc. ACRI http://www.acricfd.com offers a cheap student version of their Answer CFD code that's probably more up you alley.

See: http://www.softflo.com/downlds.htm

Try cfd4pc.com. The software is called Microtunnel. Also, ANSWER Express from acri.com. I downloaded both. Microtunnel seemed to work but was slow. I never could get ANSWER to work, even after an hour with their tech rep. Installation was difficult and complex; ANSWER uses JAVA. Microstation imstallation was quick and easy. Both are cheap!

Sorry, should have said "Microtunnel installation".

(1). Thank you for the information. (2). The sample streamline plot of flow over a triangle shaped 2-D body shows the separated wake flow behind the body in cfd4pc.com. (3). Such separated flow region can only be resolved by viscous Navier-Stokes equations, not by inviscid Euler equation. (4).It seems to me that the use of a transient, Euler equation is not appropriate in this blunt body flow separation case. It also requires a turbulence model to handle the viscous flow.

For $ 29 you can't expect much! Thanks for the feedback.

(1). For that amount, you could get a two dozen hamburgers on Monday from a fast food store. (2). By keeping the price high and avoid any technical information, it is possible to make more money out of the black box. My suggestion is: remove the technical part of the information and move up the price tag, if he is interested in selling the program.