ANSYS FLUENT 12.

0
Users Guide
April 2009
Copyright c 2009 by ANSYS, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or
otherwise used in
any form without express written permission from ANSYS, Inc.
Airpak, Mechanical APDL, Workbench, AUTODYN, CFX, FIDAP, FloWizard,
FLUENT,
GAMBIT, Iceboard, Icechip, Icemax, Icepak, Icepro, Icewave, MixSim,
POLYFLOW, TGrid,
and any and all ANSYS, Inc. brand, product, service and feature names,
logos and
slogans are registered trademarks or trademarks of ANSYS, Inc. or its
subsidiaries
located in the United States or other countries. All other brand, product,
service and
feature names or trademarks are the property of their respective
owners.
CATIA V5 is a registered trademark of Dassault Syst`emes. CHEMKIN is a
registered
trademark of Reaction Design Inc.
Portions of this program include material copyrighted by PathScale
Corporation
2003-2004.
ANSYS, Inc. is certified to ISO 9001:2008
See the on-line documentation for the complete Legal Notices for ANSYS
proprietary
software and third-party software. If you are unable to access the Legal
Notice, contact
ANSYS, Inc.
Contents
Preface UTM-1
1 Starting and Executing ANSYS FLUENT 1-1
1.1 Starting ANSYS FLUENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-1
1.1.1 Single-Precision and Double-Precision Solvers . . . . . . . . . . . 1-1
1.1.2 Starting ANSYS FLUENT Using FLUENT Launcher . . . . . . . . 1-2
1.1.3 Starting ANSYS FLUENT on a Windows System . . . . . . . . . 1-8
1.1.4 Starting ANSYS FLUENT on a Linux/UNIX System . . . . . . . 1-9
1.1.5 Command Line Startup Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-9
1.1.6 Remote Simulation Facility (RSF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-15
1.2 Running ANSYS FLUENT in Batch Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-16
1.2.1 Background Execution on Linux/UNIX Systems . . . . . . . . . 1-16
1.2.2 Background Execution on Windows Systems . . . . . . . . . . . 1-18
1.2.3 Batch Execution Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-19
1.3 Checkpointing an ANSYS FLUENT Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-20
1.4 Cleaning Up Processes From an ANSYS FLUENT Simulation . . . . . . . 1-
22
1.5 Exiting the Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-22
2 Graphical User Interface (GUI) 2-1
2.1 GUI Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1
2.1.1 The Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1
2.1.2 Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-3
2.1.3 The Navigation Pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5
2.1.4 Task Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-6
2.1.5 The Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-7
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2.1.6 Dialog Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-8
2.1.7 Graphics Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-19
2.2 Customizing the Graphical User Interface (UNIX Systems Only) . . . . .
2-23
2.3 Using the GUI Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-24
2.3.1 Task Page and Dialog Box Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-25
2.3.2 Context-Sensitive Help (UNIX Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-25
2.3.3 Opening the Users Guide Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . 2-26
2.3.4 Opening the Users Guide Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-27
2.3.5 Opening the Reference Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-27
2.3.6 Help on Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-28
2.3.7 Help for Text Interface Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-28
2.3.8 Accessing the Other Manuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-28
2.3.9 Accessing the User Services Center Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . 2-28
2.3.10 Accessing the Online Technical Support Web Site . . . . . . . . . 2-28
2.3.11 Obtaining a Listing of Other ANSYS FLUENT License Users . . . 2-29
2.3.12 Version and Release Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-30
3 Text User Interface (TUI) 3-1
3.1 Text Menu System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-1
3.1.1 Command Abbreviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-3
3.1.2 Command Line History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-4
3.1.3 Scheme Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-4
3.1.4 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-5
3.2 Text Prompt System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-5
3.2.1 Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-6
3.2.2 Booleans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-6
3.2.3 Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-6
3.2.4 Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-6
3.2.5 Filenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-7
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3.2.6 Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-7
3.2.7 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-8
3.2.8 Default Value Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-9
3.3 Interrupts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-9
3.4 System Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-9
3.4.1 System Commands for UNIX-based Operating Systems . . . . . 3-9
3.4.2 System Commands for Windows Operating Systems . . . . . . . 3-10
3.5 Text Menu Input from Character Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-11
3.6 Using the Text Interface Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-12
4 Reading and Writing Files 4-1
4.1 Shortcuts for Reading and Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-2
4.1.1 Default File Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-2
4.1.2 Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-3
4.1.3 Detecting File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-3
4.1.4 Recent File List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-4
4.1.5 Reading and Writing Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-4
4.1.6 Tilde Expansion (Linux/UNIX Systems Only) . . . . . . . . . . 4-6
4.1.7 Automatic Numbering of Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-6
4.1.8 Disabling the Overwrite Confirmation Prompt . . . . . . . . . . 4-7
4.1.9 Toolbar Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-8
4.2 Reading Mesh Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-8
4.2.1 Reading TGrid Mesh Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-9
4.2.2 Reading Surface Meshes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-9
4.2.3 Reading GAMBIT and GeoMesh Mesh Files . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-9
4.2.4 Reading PreBFC Unstructured Mesh Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-9
4.3 Reading and Writing Case and Data Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-10
4.3.1 Reading and Writing Case Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-10
4.3.2 Reading and Writing Data Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-11
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4.3.3 Reading and Writing Case and Data Files Together . . . . . . . 4-11
4.3.4 Automatic Saving of Case and Data Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-12
4.4 Reading and Writing Parallel Data Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-15
4.5 Reading FLUENT/UNS and RAMPANT Case and Data Files . . . . . . . 4-
17
4.6 Reading and Writing Profile Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-18
4.7 Reading and Writing Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-19
4.8 Writing a Boundary Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-20
4.9 Reading Scheme Source Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-20
4.10 Creating and Reading Journal Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-21
4.10.1 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-23
4.11 Creating Transcript Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-23
4.12 Importing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-24
4.12.1 ABAQUS Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-25
4.12.2 Mechanical APDL Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-26
4.12.3 ANSYS CFX Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-26
4.12.4 Meshes and Data in CGNS Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-27
4.12.5 EnSight Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-27
4.12.6 ANSYS FIDAP Neutral Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-28
4.12.7 GAMBIT and GeoMesh Mesh Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-28
4.12.8 HYPERMESH ASCII Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-28
4.12.9 IC3M Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-28
4.12.10 I-deas Universal Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-30
4.12.11 LSTC Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-30
4.12.12 Marc POST Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-30
4.12.13 NASTRAN Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-31