ANSYS Tutorial

CFD Analysis with Ansys Workbench and Fluent

By Rodrigo Sánchez Monteón
Checked by Víctor Quezada
Introduction
In this tutorial we´ll see how to import a geometry, create an enclosure/Boolean to define the
solution domain, mesh the domain, analyze the results, and more.
Objective
Learn and understand the flow past a 3D object inside a virtual wind tunnel by running CFD
simulations and visualizing the results by means of vectors and contours.
Note: The words in italics are functions or tabs inside Ansys and the sentences with
slashes in between words are steps.

Module 1 Geometry
In this module we´ll learn how to import a 3D geometry and create the enclosure domain in
order to perform a fluid flow analysis.

Steps:
Once we´ve opened Ansys Workbench, let’s create an analysis system for Fluent.
Create a fluid flow (fluent) analysis system
• Click and drag the module Fluid Flow (Fluent) from de Toolbox to the Project
Schematic until the red countered box appears; then “drop” the module into it.
Import geometry
Note: For this tutorial, the geometry to be imported can be in format .STP
(STEP) or .igs (IGES).
• Once the Analysis system was created, we must import the 3D model or the
geometry we want to analyze. To do that, right click on the option Geometry,
then follow the steps: Geometry/Import Geometry/Browse as shown in the
next figure.

• When the geometry has been imported correctly, we´ll know it when the
question mark is changed for a green tick (check mark). Now, we must
proceed by opening DesignModeler: right click on Geometry/Edit Geometry
in DesignModeler.
Creating the enclosure domain
• When the DM (DesignModeler) window is open, we must generate our
geometry by clicking on the command Generate.

• Please remember to choose the units that your geometry needs. The next
figure will show you how to do it.

• Now let’s proceed to create the Enclosure.

Note: if your geometry is very complex or if it has any assembling mistakes, the
enclosure will fail.
• After we clicked the enclosure tab you must click on Generate.
• If your enclosure looks like the next figure, please consider using a “bigger”
unit. (mm < cm)
• Delete the enclosure, change units, and create the enclosure again for having
an adequate solution domain (where lateral boundaries will not affect the
soundness of the results).

• Next thing we must do, is create the Boolean to define the inlet area, outlet
area, and the surrounding wall, which are the boundary conditions of the
problem.
• We must create a subtract operation and define the “wind tunnel volume” (the
box surrounding the Geometry) and the “Geometry to work with”.
• Click on the enclosure without clicking on the Geometry and click on Not
selected tab from target bodies, then on apply.

• Now click on the + Symbol to expand the bodies list and select all the parts of
your Geometry (if it is an assembly) without selecting the last one of the list
“Solid”; click on Not selected from Tool Bodies, then on apply.

• After finishing, click on Generate.

• After generating the Boolean, use the combination Ctrl + F to select the face
selection filter, click on the face of the enclosure you want to be the “inlet”,
then right click on the same face and select Named Selection.
• Click on apply and rename the Selection as “inlet”.

• Click on Generate.
• Repeat for “outlet” and “wall” (to select all four walls, keep Ctrl pressed as
you click on the four walls.
• Once you have the whole domain defined, you must see something like this:

• We have finished with the Geometry module.

• Close DesignModeler Window (there is no need to save progress, it is
automatic).
Module 2 Mesh
In this module we´ll learn how to do an automatic mesh, a sizable mesh, and how to avoid
mesh errors on complex geometries.
Steps
Once we´re back on the workbench window we must double click option 3 from our fluid
flow analysis: Mesh.
Generating an automatic mesh
The automatic mesh fulfills the purpose of a simple first approximation for our CFD
analysis.

• On the mesh window, once opened, there are two ways to generate an
automatic mesh.
• The first one is by clicking on the Generate Mesh tab as shown in the figure:

• And the second one is by right

clicking on Mesh in the outline
section and then selecting Generate
Mesh (in newer Ansys versions, the
Generate Mesh tab could be only
Generate).
• The resulting mesh for the two ways
will be the same, so we can choose
the way we like the most.
 • Once we clicked on Generate Mesh, we must wait for the mesh to finish, we´ll
see a loading square on the bottom left corner of the window.

• When the automatic mesh is complete, we can close the entire mesh window
without saving, like in Geometry Module, but it is advisable to save
everything.

Sizable Mesh and how to avoid errors on complex geometries

The purpose on doing a sizable mesh is to increase the number of nodes and elements.
For nodes we understand the vertices of each “triangle” in an unstructured mesh, that
relates with the surrounding nodes and creates the elements or “control volumes”,
where all the “governing equations” are numerically solved by Ansys. These
equations are mainly the mass conservation, the momentum conservation, and the
energy conservation (for a compressible flow problem). Even that for most cases,
more elements mean more precision in the results, by decreasing the mesh size, there
would be more impact on the time for converging, if converging. It’s a matter of
experience how to choose the right mesh size. Anyways, there are several ways to
decrease the size of the element:
• All of them can be done on the section Details of “Mesh”.
• The first way is by reducing the element size on the Default section to a
smaller number:
Note: Be careful on how small you choose to generate the elements; remember that the
smaller the element, the most computational expensive will be your analysis.
• After choosing an element size, you must click on Update or on Generate
Mesh (both can be found by right clicking on Mesh).
• Also be careful not to overcome the
elements’ limit for Ansys student (500000
elements), otherwise your analysis can’t be
done.
• If Ansys shows error messages, consider
generating larger elements. We can also use
an Ansys function called Use Adaptive
Sizing on the Sizing tab (see figure). This
function will reform the shapes of the mesh
and adapt it to the Geometry.
• Once finished the sized meshing, we can
close the mesh window.

Module 3 Setup
This module will allow us to set the variables for our CFD analysis. We´ll learn how to
identify a surface area, a projected area, the whole volume, the static pressure distribution
over our geometry, as well as how to render velocity vectors along the geometry.
Steps
Let´s start this module by opening the Setup window (which is actually the Fluent Launcher)
as shown next:
Stablishing boundary conditions and materials
• First thing we have to do, is to define the fluid that we are going to work with;
it can be air, CO2, hydrogen, etc.
• To do that, expand the Material and Fluid tabs, then double click on Air, and
on the Create/edit materials window open Fluent Database to search the
appropriate materials.

• When we find the materials to work with in Fluent Database, click on Copy
and close the Database, then select Change/create to add these materials (we
must do one at a time).
• Now we must stablish the boundary conditions for the flow inlet and the flow
outlet.
• Double click “inlet” on the Boundary Conditions tree and set the desired inlet
velocity:

• Click on OK. Now, open outlet boundary condition (pressure-outlet).

• For outlet we are going to set a gauge (manometric) pressure of 101325 Pa.
Initialize and run the calculation
Here, we´re going to set hybrid initialization and the number of iterations.
• Expand the Solution tab and double click on Initialization.
• Now, we´ll set Hybrid Initialization and click on initialize.

• After initializing the hybrid method, we´ll se the next figure on the bottom of
the window.
• Now we´re going to run the
calculation by setting the number
of iterations and the reporting
interval.
• Afterwards, we must click on
Calculate.
• It will take several minutes
(luckily!), so let’s be patient.

• Once the calculation is done, we must calculate the projected areas (for
escalating the results) and insert the data on Reference Values. The values on
the projected area, the leading edge in this case, we must be in the same axis
of the incoming flow.
• To calculate the projected areas, we must expand the Reports tab, and select
Projected Areas, then select the surface: Wall-solid (this will select the
incoming velocity profile). Don’t forget to select the flow axis; then click on
Compute.
 • Let´s copy the area value and paste it on Reference Values as shown in the
next figure:

• In the reference values, we must insert all the data for our analysis, body
length (in the same axis as the projected surface), pressure, velocity, density,
etc.
• Once we´ve finished to insert the data/values, we must re-do the initialization
and calculation, this will increase the precision of the analysis.

Plot graphics, contours and vectors.

Here we´ll learn how to do some post-processing by plotting the contours and vectors,
and how to probe the data shown
• We must expand the Graphics tab and double click on contours; then, let´s
make sure our that the Contours window looks like this:
• When we´ve finished entering the parameters shown in the figure above, we
must click on Save/Display to generate the graph of the static pressure over
the wind profile.
• To probe the data over a certain point in the structure, we must click on the
dropper icon, then we can click whenever we want to probe data.

• Clicking on any part of the wind profile, we can read on the bottom panel the
information given by Ansys on that point in the surface.

• Now, we´ll plot the vectors. If the vectors look very small, we must increase
the scale.
• On the expanded Graphics tab, double click Vectors and select the surface
“wall-solid”
 • Like for the contours, we can probe the data from the vectors in order to know
the velocity at any point of our wing.
• After doing the graphics we can close Fluent in order to perform a major post-
processing of the results.

Module 4 Results
This is a shorter module, where we´ll learn how to create an iso surface to analyze the fluid
behavior along the wind profile.
Steps
Let´s open option 6 Results on workbench by double clicking on Results. Once the Results
window is open, we must do insert/location/IsoSurface and select the domain for the
IsoSurface; in this case, the domain will be “Y” axis:

• We can move the IsoSurface back and forth by moving the little bar in the
Value tab, as shown in the above figure.
• The previous step had a very important limitation: the IsoSurface must be over
the wing for these steps to work correctly.
• Now we must create a streamline and define the Start From surface; this
surface will be the IsoSurface previously created.
• We can define the number of particles to show in the animation.
• When finished all the steps click on Apply (it´s in the bottom left of the
window).
• Close Results window and save the Fluid Flow (fluent) analysis.

For now, we have finished this tutorial, congratulations! Now, let´s improve the rocket
science on Mexico!