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Using CFD-VisCART in Batch Mode Print E-mail

CFD-VisCART allows you to handle extremely complex geometries with lots of details. Often, you may have a geometry that you only modify slightly, but would like to use the mesh parameters that you used previously. In order to make this very simple, a batch mode was implemented for CFD-VisCART v2006.

Starting from an ASCII input file, you can import your geometry, set your mesh parameters and generate the mesh without ever opening the CFD-VisCART graphical interface. This obviously will decrease the time it takes to setup the mesh parameters for similar geometries, and while this situation may be the most obvious use, the batch mode option can be used for any case.

This user tip will show a short and simple example that can be extended to any complex geometry.

Example:

The input script lines along with their equivalent operations in the CFD-VisCART GUI are described below:

Import geometry
import_stl missile.stl 1

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: in the Import files panel, choose the STL File Type and select the missile.stl file.

Image

Figure 1.  File Import panel of CFD-VisCART

Manipulate geometry
rotateZ 1 30

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: In the GEOM tab, select Rotate for the Geometry Manipulation, select 'About Z-Axis' and provide the angle in degrees.

Image

Figure 2.  Missle body after being rotated 30 degrees.

Setting Properties
set_bounding_box -100 -21 -21 125 50 21

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: In the Bounding Box Setting panel, provide Xmin, Xmax, Ymin, Ymax, Zmin and Zmax.

Sources
define_box_source 0 0 -10 45 25 10 2.0 1.0 1.0
define_surface_source 1 0.7 0.35

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: in the Source tab, select the box source, provide Min-Max corner Coordinates and Grid sizes. Select the missile surface in the Graphical window, select the surface source and provide normal and tangential length scales

Projected Mesh Generation: (______Single Domain Only______)
generate_projected_mesh omnitree 9.0 3.0 3.0 1.0 3 0.5 1.0

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: In the Projected Grid Generation panel, provide the Largest Cell Sizes in Simulation Area, number of Cartesian layers and Tangential and Normal directions cell sizes.

Projected Mesh Improvement
improve_mesh 5 10

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: In the Grid panel, provide the Min Angle and Max Iteration for the Detect/improve tool.

Save Results
save_vgd missile.VGD
save_dtf missile.DTF

Equivalent in CFD-VisCART GUI: Go to File Save As VGD, and File Save As DTF.

In order to use the batch mode capability, you must execute the command from an X-terminal, such as Exceed or startx that comes with Cygwin. In the X-terminal, simply type the following command to launch CFD-VisCART in batch mode:

CFD-VisCART -b input.file

 

Once it is done, your DTF file is ready to be loaded in CFD-ACE-GUI for the problem set up. Your VGD file is also ready to be read into CFD-VisCART for any modifications you may want to make. This new batch mode capability still has some limitations. For instance, it is not yet available for multiple domain mesh generation, but this additional capability could be available in a future version. If you would like to see a description of all the current functions available, please click here.

 

Regards,
Emmanuel Bot
Applications Engineer

 

New Tools in CFD-VisCART v2006

CFD-VisCART is best suited for aerodynamic and automotive underhood applications involving extremely complex geometries. When generating the mesh, you might encounter negative volumes in the mesh. CFD-ACE-SOLVER is not capable of handling such meshes, and thus these deficiencies in the mesh must be removed before submitting it to the solver.

Using Local and Global Body Fit Factors in CFD-VisCART

The 'Body-fit Factor' is a percentage value used to determine how closely the Cartesian mesh front faces are projected to the real geometric surfaces. In other words, the Body-fit factor controls grid quality versus geometric fidelity. The value is between 0% and 100%, where 0%means no projection and 100% means complete projection to the surface.

CFD-VisCART 'Save Image' feature

As in CFD-VIEW, CFD-VisCART has a 'Save image' feature that allows you to save snapshots of you model. If you are interested in this tip, please read on.

Dump Batch Script in CFD-VisCART V2009

Batch processing through scripting appeared in CFD-VisCART v2006 and this feature kept improving since then. You can see a short description in this past user tip. This can be very useful to create meshes without graphical interaction or to set up similar models over and over.

Cell Size Growth Control in CFD-VisCART

In CFD-VisCART, the Cartesian cells can split or grow by a minimum factor of 2 because of the intrinsic cartesian-cell-splitting algorithm. Due to this, in some cases, there is a chance that the mesh could grow from dense (at the wall) to coarse (away from the wall) within a short distance.


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