Customer Training Material

Lecture 3

Basic Overview of Using

the FLUENT User
Interface

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Solver Basics

Parallel Processing Customer Training Material

• FLUENT can readily be run across many

processors in parallel. This will greatly
speed up the simulation time.

• It is common for modern generation

computers to have several processors,
and / or several compute ‘cores’ per
processor. Each one of these can be a
‘node ’ for the FLUENT simulation.

• The mesh is automatically partitioned, and

different blocks of the mesh are assigned to
the different compute nodes.

• Running FLUENT on a single machine with

multiple cores can simply be set by selecting
the ‘parallel’ option on startup (see image).

• Alternatively a distributed parallel cluster can

be set up, and the simulation run across
many* machines simultaneously
* FLUENT scales well, and simulations using
several hundred nodes are not unheard of.
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Solver Basics

FLUENT 13 GUI Navigation Customer Training Material

• The FLUENT GUI is arranged such that the tasks are generally arranged
from top to bottom in the project setup tree.

• Selecting an item in the tree opens the relevant input items in the center
pane.
– General
– Models
– Materials
– Boundary
Conditions
– Solver Settings
– Initialization and
Calculation
– Postprocessing

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Solver Basics

Mouse Functionality Customer Training Material

• Mouse button functionality depends on the chosen solver (2D / 3D) and
can be configured in the solver.
Display Mouse Buttons…
• Default settings
– 2D Solver
• Left button translates/pans (dolly)
• Middle button zooms
• Right button selects/probes
– 3D Solver
• Left button rotates about 2 axes
• Middle button zooms
– Middle click on point in screen centers point
in window
• Right button selects/probes

• Retrieve detailed flow field information at point with Probe enabled.

– Right-click on the graphics display.

• User can choose between classic ‘FLUENT’ settings, or for mouse

behaviour consistent with Workbench.
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Solver Basics

Text User Interface Customer Training Material

• Most GUI commands have a corresponding TUI command.

– Press the Enter key to display the command set at the current level.
– q moves up one level.
– Some advanced
commands are only
available through
the TUI.

• The TUI offers many very

valuable benefits:
– Journal (text) files can TUI
be constructed to Window
automate repetitive tasks.
– FLUENT can be run in
batch mode, with TUI
journal scripts set to automate
the loading / modification / solver execution and postprocessing.
– Very complex models can be set using a spreadsheet to generate the TUI commands.

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Solver Basics

Sample FLUENT Journal Customer Training Material

• A journal file is a text file which contains TUI commands which FLUENT will
execute sequentially.

• Note that the FLUENT TUI accepts abbreviations of the commands for example,
– rcd Reads case and data files
– wcd Writes case and data files

Sample Journal File

; Read case file
rc example.cas.gz
; Initialize the solution
/solve/initialize/initialize-flow
; Calculate 50 iterations
it 50
; Write data file
wd example50.dat.gz
; Calculate another 50 iterations
it 50
; Write another data file
wd example100.dat.gz
; Exit FLUENT
exit
yes

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Solver Basics

Scaling the Mesh and Selecting Units Customer Training Material

• When FLUENT reads a mesh file

(.msh), all dimensions are
assumed to be in units of meters.
– If your model was not built in
meters, then it must be scaled.
– Always verify that the domain
extents are correct.

• When importing a mesh under

Workbench, the mesh does not
need to be scaled; however, the
units are set to the default MKS
system.

• Any “mixed” units system can be

used if desired.
– By default, FLUENT uses the SI
system of units (specifically, MKS
system).
– Any units can be specified in the
Set Units panel, accessed from
the top menu.

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Solver Basics

Polyhedral Mesh Conversion Customer Training Material

• A tetrahedral or hybrid grid can be converted to

polyhedra in the FLUENT GUI (not in the
preprocessor). Tet/Hybrid Mesh
– Generate a tetrahedral mesh then convert inside
FLUENT.
– Advantages
• Improved mesh quality.
• Can reduce cell count significantly.
• User has control of the conversion process.
– Disadvantages:
• Cannot be adapted or converted again.
• Cannot use tools such as smooth, swap, merge and
extrude to modify the mesh.

• Two conversion options are available in the Polyhedral Mesh

Mesh menu:
Mesh > Polyhedra > Convert Domain
– Convert all cells in the domain (except hex cells)
to polyhedra
• Cannot convert adaped meshes with hanging nodes

– Convert only highly skewed cells to polyhedra

Mesh > Polyhedra > Convert Skewed
Cells

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Solver Basics

Material Properties Customer Training Material

• Material properties need to be defined for all fluids and solids to be simulated

• The parameters asked for will depend on the models selected for the simulation

• Many common materials are already defined in the ‘FLUENT Database’ and can
easily be copied
over to the model

Note that these

values may be either:
• Constants
• Functions of
temperature
• Other built in functions
following common
relationships
• Defined by the user
in a UDF.

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Solver Basics

Operating Conditions Customer Training Material

• The Operating Pressure with a Reference

Pressure Location sets the reference value that
is used in computing gauge pressures.

• The Operating Temperature sets the reference

temperature (used when computing buoyancy
forces).

• Specified Operating
Density sets the reference
value for flows with widely
varying density.

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Solver Basics

Computing the Solution Customer Training Material

• The remaining steps are covered in the subsequent lectures

(and the practical workshops)

• Setting Boundary conditions (all outer boundaries to the fluid must be

prescribed - for example velocity inlet / pressure outlet / symmetry / wall)

• Solver Settings (optimising settings for speed, accuracy and stability)

• Initialisation (initial values for the flowfield)

• Solving the problem, and checking for convergence

• Postprocessing the results.

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Appendix :
Additional notes

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Solver Basics

Mesh Information and Hierarchy Customer Training Material

• All mesh information is stored in the mesh file.

– Node coordinates
Node
– Connectivity
Cell
– Zone definition
Center
• Similar to the way geometry is defined, mesh Cell Face
entities obey a hierarchy:
– Node Edge intersection / grid point Boundary
– Edge Boundary of a face (defined by Face
two nodes
– Face The boundaries of cells, defined by Cell
a collection of edges
– Cell The control volumes into which the
domain is discretized. Simple 2D Mesh
– Zone A collection of nodes, edges, faces
or cells.
• The computational domain is defined by all Node
members of the hierarchy
– For fluid flow simulation only, the domain consists only
of the fluid region. Boundary
– For conjugate heat transfer or fluid-structure interaction Face
problems, the domain needs to include any solid parts
that are present.
Edge
• Boundary data is assigned to face zones.
• Material data and source terms are assigned to cell
zones. Cell
Simple 3D mesh
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Solver Basics

Reordering and Modifying the Grid Customer Training Material

• The grid can be reordered so that neighboring cells are near each other in
the zones and in memory
– Improves efficiency of memory access and reduces the bandwidth of the
computation
– Reordering can be performed for the entire domain or specific cell zones.
Mesh > Reorder > Domain Mesh > Reorder > Zones

– The bandwidth of each partition in the grid can be printed for reference.
Mesh > Reorder > Domain

• The face/cell zones can also be modified by the following operations in the
Grid menu:
– Separation and merge of zones
– Fusing of cell zones with merge of duplicate faces and nodes
– Translate, rotate, reflect face or cell zones
– Extrusion of face zones to extend the domain
– Replace a cell zone with another or delete it
– Activate and Deactivate cell zones

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Solver Basics

Profile Data and Solution Data Interpolation Customer Training Material

• FLUENT allows interpolation of selected

variable data on both face zones and cell
zones by using profile files and data
interpolation files, respectively.
– For example, a velocity profile from
experimental data or previous FLUENT run at
an inlet, or a solution interpolated from a
coarse mesh to fine mesh.
File > Write > Profile

File > Read > Profile

• Profile files are data files which contain point

data for selected variables on particular face
zones, and can be both written and read in a
FLUENT session.
File > Interpolate

• Similarly, Interpolation data files contain

discrete data for selected field variables on
particular cell zones to be written and read
into FLUENT.

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