Hi all,

I would like to find out what is the best CFD software available to simulate VOF problems in microfluidics. I would also like to find out how ANSYS compares with CFD-ACE+.

John

John,

VOF was invented by Dr. C. W. (Tony) Hirt. His latest innovations are built into Flow-3D, developed and marketed by Flow Science, Santa Fe, NM.

Flow Science is a sponsor of cfd-online, so their address is in the list of sponsors.

Good Luck!

PS: I don't own any part of Flow Science and have no relationship with the firm. If you use Flow-3D, I get no commission. I have used the code (years ago) and it was a positive experience.

Hi,

Jim is right, FLOW-3D is a good code for free-surface applications, but not very user-friendly or easy to use with complex geometries.

If you will be needing to do other sorts of CFD, then you might want to look elsewhere, as FLOW-3D it not good for internal/external flows not are the comlex physics very advanced or easy to use.

Of the other codes:

Fluent's VOF is clumsy and hard to converge (look on the FLuent message board)

CFX has a greatly improved free-surface capability with CFX5 over CFX4.

I have seen some good results with Star-CD, but the convergence seems slow.

I dont know about CFX-Ace, I'm afraid.