CFD - Computational Fluid Dynamics, Motorsport, Formula 1

[raymondu999]

Aha. Never knew that - never did much engineering modeling to begin with.

[astracrazy]

hi guys, i've partitioned linux on my mac and installed openfoam and paraview. If anyone can pm some simple tutorials on what i do now i.e to run a simulation on a model i've made in sketchup etc it would be much appreciated. I feel quiet lost with this - i don't think it works how i thought it would

Many thanks!

[shelly]

Ther si a nice tutorial called the motorbike tutorial for openfoam. All the files needed should already be loaded in your distribution.

[astracrazy]

can't get it to work - stupid thing (most likely stupid me)

any one got any other suggestions for basic cfd programs? Ideally for mac or windows

[Jersey Tom]

Well what are you trying to achieve?

"Basic CFD" is a bit of an oxymoron. If fluid flows around racecars were "basic" there would be no need for CFD. If you want to get a meaningful result out of CFD, I don't think you'll get it from just dicking around and not understanding the science behind it. Understanding criticality of boundary conditions, mesh sizes, turbulence models, whatever.

If you're just trying to make a cool looking picture with lots of colorful swirls, may as well use Photoshop, or a printout and colored pencils.

Not to be excessively harsh, but it seems there are a number of people who just want to jump and "make plots." Well - why?

[Tim.Wright]

What JT said.

Contrary to what I lot of people will lead you to believe, CFD (or FEA, or handling simlations, or electrical KERS simulations) are not easy or simple pieces of work. I'm very suspicious of any finite-element type analyses which is completed in less than a day. Especially if it involves assemblies.

You have to have the subject knowledge first (fluid dynamics), then you use the tool (CFD), not the other way around. What you are doing now is like buying a CNC machine without knowing how to machine.

If you still really want to make some colourful (but useless) plots, download solidworks. Even I can run a CFD analysis in that and I'm a suspension engineer

Tim

[kilcoo316]

Wouldn't CFD accept a COLLADA file? AFAIK COLLADA is an industry standard for interchange. It's been a while since I worked with G Sketchup, but it can export to COLLADA, last I remembered.

Would that go through Blender?


There is a simulation path of:

Blender >> Gmsh/Engrid >> OpenFoam >> Parafoam


But, as the others are saying - if you don't know what your doing.... your essentially wasting your time. OpenFoam is hard enough to set up for a practitioner, never mind a novice.

[astracrazy]

yes i think i misunderstood about this.

edit: has anyone had any experience with Khamsin, a Google Sketchup plugin for CFD modeling?

[Rideway]

POST DELETED (It has been already discussd in another topic)

[Th0R]

I'm sorry if this question has already been discussed in this forum, but i couldn't find it in a quick search.
Is there somewhere an overview which team uses which cfd tools? It would be great to know, which ones i still have to learn

[Just_a_fan]

yes i think i misunderstood about this.

edit: has anyone had any experience with Khamsin, a Google Sketchup plugin for CFD modeling?

Have you looked at this?
http://www.hibouscientificsoftware.com.au/products/download/KHA-UG-06%28A%29.pdf

[Pierce89]

Wouldn't CFD accept a COLLADA file? AFAIK COLLADA is an industry standard for interchange. It's been a while since I worked with G Sketchup, but it can export to COLLADA, last I remembered.

COLLADA may be common in 3d graphic design and gaming, but not sure it's that typical in engineering CAD work.

Standard Tessellation Language and Parasolid are definitely two popular "broad application" CAE formats.

every model we've run sims on at school, was as mentioned above, STL files

[astracrazy]

yes i think i misunderstood about this.

edit: has anyone had any experience with Khamsin, a Google Sketchup plugin for CFD modeling?

Have you looked at this?
http://www.hibouscientificsoftware.com.au/products/download/KHA-UG-06%28A%29.pdf

ye i've looked just didn't know if anyone has tried it

[Pierce89]

I'm sorry if this question has already been discussed in this forum, but i couldn't find it in a quick search.
Is there somewhere an overview which team uses which cfd tools? It would be great to know, which ones i still have to learn

It's sort of considered a performance secret. You can judge what some teams run by their sponsors. I've also heard some F1 teams run Openfoam( but with proprietary HIGHLY customized additions to the code)

[kilcoo316]

Renault built their own code, one of the guys did it went through QUB a few years before me.

A real, real smart man.


I think Renault and Boeing have a thing going now regarding computational methods.


[I had thought Renault and Airbus were involved in CFD in the past... ]