[shep4045]

Hi all,

I want to preface by saying this is my first post in this forum, if I am missing information or this is the incorrect place to post please let me know.

I am also an undergraduate student. I am by no means an expert on CFD, but I have been using Star CCM+ for four years now with guidance from professors, coworkers and other peers so I am semi-confident in troubleshooting most issues I encounter, however this is a new one.

The case I am having issues with is an external flow analysis of a multi-element wing, low-Reynolds numbers. Most of my setup follows Star's "Best Practices" listed in their manual along with personal experience from what has worked best in the past.

Physics Setup:
-RANS
-Steady State
-3D
-Constant Density
-Segregated Flow
-All y+ Treatment
-Exact Wall Distance
-K-Omega Turbulence
-SST (Menter) K-Omega

The case is fairly small, ~10 million cells. I'm running on fairly limited hardware: 32 GB memory and 8 threads.

I encounter the error when I initialize the solution. When the initialization reaches the "Computing Wall Distance: Vertex Distance" the program freezes and closes the simulation. Star CCM+ stays open, but with no simulation open. A window pops up with the error message, I have attached a screenshot of the error along with the Star CCM+ log for that session.

My attempts to resolve the issue:

1. I checked with our university's IT to make sure this wasn't an issue with a license or server error. They said everything was good on their end so I proceeded to check my model.

2. This was the 5th case that I had been running in this experiment. I have been making modifications to the geometry in between using NX so my first thought was to check my CAD model for issues. I remodeled one surface that could've been leaving a very small sliver. I also checked the model for empty pockets within bodies, infinitely thin sections, sharp edges, etc. Once I was confident in the model I created a new simulation but encountered the same error.

3. I checked the surface mesh for any errors using Star's built in "mesh repair" tool. It marked no issues with any cells.

4. I tried switching to a K-Epsilon turbulence model and decreased my number of prism layers to 10. I just wanted to see if I could get a case running, but unfortunately I still encountered the same error.

I've also done plenty of digging on google for similar issues and haven't come up with anything yet. I figured this would be a good place to ask for some support.

I appreciate in advance any help!

[LuckyTran]

The error message only says Star crashed. No special or specific info.


If it crashes during initialization then probably you have a bad reference in one of your plots or something. Did you reuse an old .sim file and try to swap out the mesh or do you start clean every time?

[shep4045]

Creating a new sim file every time and generating a new mesh.

The point about having a bad reference in a plot is interesting though. I might try deleting any monitors and plots that I’ve created and see if I can get it to run. If it works then I’ll check my references.

Thanks for the help!

[shashankshankar]

Hello, I am facing the same error. the meshing initialization happens but parallel meshing fails with this error while serial meshing works. May I know whether you were able to solve this issue or not