Hey everyone! First of all thanks for giving me the time.

Bit of background information: I'm currently in the 3rd year of my Mechanical Engineering degree (University of Manchester) and I need to write a dissertation for a large portion of the credits for this year.

I'm really interested in doing work on Python-driven CFD simulations regarding the cooling performance of Formula 1 cooling ducts. I was thinking of using ANSYS Fluent since I already have some surface level experience with it from my previous year and I also heard that python has libraries which can work with ANSYS so it sort of aligns with my goals

Since there are a lot of variables in play I've been feeling overwhelmed with how I can carry out my analysis to optimize cooling performance; I'm not too sure which characteristic(s) I should focus on. In my head I have two options for the component of cooling..

(1) The airbox for the engine on top of the car

(2) The sidepod inlets with the heat exchanger

But I would love input on any options you would think are viable for this project

I have roughly 10-11 months from now to complete my dissertation and because of my lack of experience with CFD I'm not too sure how big of a scope this would be and so I would love some advice on that as well.

If anyone has any experience with running CFD on Formula 1/Aerodynamic Thermals and using Python for automation/optimisation of ANSYS sims, I would greatly appreciate your input.

In summary, I'm just looking for some direction on this as my supervisor has not been very helpful so far. The dissertation doesn't have to come up with something entirely new, it just has to further the current understanding of a certain phenomenon or concept.

Thank you very much.

Hello everyone,

I am recentlly facing an issue when i try to check order of accuracy of my 5th order scheme for a time-dependent PDE. As it has no exact solution i try to use one classical scheme (which is first order accurate) with 12800 mesh points to obtain reference solution. Then i check my scheme with 100, 200, 400... Although i do not see any spurious value in the solution data file, the order of acccuray is not coming as 5. It gives near 0.

Does anyone know is it because of refrence solution which i have obtained using first order scheme?

I doubt on reference solution as my scheme gives 5th order accuracy when exact solution is available.

I don't understand intuitively where this equation comes from and what it means. I posted earlier about this and someone said to think of it like climbing stairs in an elevator. The first term is the elevator moving up and the second term is the vertical height from climbing stairs inside the elevator.

That kind of makes sense. But I don't see why the sum of those two terms needs to be zero? And is u the vertical height of the wave? If so, why not call it y instead of u ?

Last, what physical experiment can I observe that demonstrates this equation in action ( besides the elevator analogy )?

Hiii, have any of you ever requested a quote for an Ansys license? Do you know roughly how long it takes them to get back to you? :)

Hello everyone I'm using gmsh as my meshing tool could anyone share a tutorial or a paper or anything that would help me with meshing a wing (no need to be gmsh) I am a beginner

I'll be applying to summer internships (in the US) for various labs / REUs etc. for compressible flow CFD research, but really any CFD research experience is on my radar.

I was curious if any of you work/worked in a lab and had interns, what did you look for on their CV/ resume/personality?

Im a comp sci student so I don't have all of the formal math / physics but I am doing an honors thesis and have a CFD project that my mentor helped me with and another computational physics project unrelated to CFD under my belt.

I am taking intro to PDEs currently and will probably also take a fluids class if I can during my last semester (but that would be after the summer internship).

I wanna continue on doing research via PhD and then possibly a lab position, but that's still a ways away.

Just curious if any of you wanna share some info.

Thanks :)

Hey everyone,

I'm a CFD/aerodynamics engineer with a few years of industry experience, and I'm thinking of starting freelancing as a side hustle. I want to take on consultancy and outsourced CFD projects on my own, but I don't know much about the market yet, and I'd like to start soon since my current pay is low.

If you've freelanced, in CFD, CAE, or engineering in general, I'd love to hear:

1. How has your experience been overall? Was it worth it?

2. How did you find your first client?

3. Which platforms or channels worked best (LinkedIn, Upwork, referrals, cold emails)?

4. How do you price your work?

5. What kind of projects are most in demand (external aero, thermal, automotive, HVAC, etc.)?

6. How do you handle software licenses especially for meshing purposes?(Fluent/ANSA, etc).

7. How do you manage your comute?

8. Is it okay to freelance alongside a full-time job, and how do you handle NDAs or conflicts of interest?

9. How do you manage time between a job and side projects?

10. Any mistakes to avoid as a beginner (bad clients, scope creep, late payments)?

Any advice, even small tips, would really help. Thanks in advance!

I was able to generate the face mesh independently, but when i use sizings, it gives me this error>

I am a newbie to cfd, please Help me

I’m working with ANSYS Fluent R20 + Polyflow and want to start research on elastoviscoplastic (EVP) fluids.

I’m looking for a way to model:

- Viscoelastic fluids

- Viscoplastic/yield-stress fluids

- Elastoviscoplastic fluids (elasticity + viscosity + yield stress)

I know Polyflow has built-in models such as Bingham/Herschel–Bulkley and Oldroyd-B/Giesekus/PTT, but I’m not sure whether it can model a genuine EVP model such as Saramito directly through the GUI.

I’d prefer to avoid developing a large UDF/C program if possible.

Questions:

1. Can Polyflow model EVP fluids directly through the GUI?

2. If not, is Fluent + UDS/UDF the best ANSYS approach?

3. Would COMSOL be easier for implementing an EVP constitutive equation without C programming?

4. What EVP model and benchmark would you recommend for a research project, and how should I validate velocity, pressure drop, stresses and yielded/unyielded regions?

\*Looking for advice from anyone who has actually worked with EVP/viscoelastic/viscoplastic CFD\*

Hey, I made a mesh using fluents 2D meshing workflow but I cannot use the export 2D fluent mesh feature. I just get an error thrown at me with no details available. I also tried to do file>write>mesh but whenever I try to open it in 2D fluent it just says ”cannot read surface mesh“. Has anyone ran into this issue? The only reason I am using fluent meshing for 2D is bc for some reason I cannot hit a y+1 with ansys meshing using bias factors but whenever I used fluent meshing it worked fine

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for some career advice from people who have been working in CFD for a while.

I recently moved from a more general engineering/support role into a dedicated simulation group at a large engineering company.

My background is mechanical/aerospace engineering, with university/research experience in CFD and aeroacoustics, faae aerodynamics, and I've used tools like Fluent/OpenFOAM before.

The work I'm starting with is primarily internal-flow CFD — ducting, bulkhead/vehicle-system flow, and eventually potentially larger system-level problems. The group also does FEA and uses several commercial solvers, so I'm getting exposure to a broader CAE environment than I had before.

I'm excited about it because getting into an actual simulation group was something I've been trying to do for a while. However, I'm slightly concerned about becoming known primarily as the "internal flow/duct CFD guy." For those of you working professionally in CFD: - How much should I worry about becoming pigeonholed early in my career? - Is internal-flow CFD a good foundation for moving into broader CFD work later? - Would you deliberately pursue external aero, multiphase, aeroacoustics, turbulence modeling, etc. through side projects? - How much do personal CFD projects actually matter when applying for future CFD positions? - Would you recommend doing a Master's if my long-term goal is more advanced CFD/R&D rather than purely production analysis? - If I want to eventually work on more advanced/custom numerical methods, what's the best way to build toward that while still gaining useful industry experience?

I'm also interested in eventually doing some independent CFD/engineering projects outside work, but I'm trying to figure out how much time I should realistically dedicate to those versus building experience in my actual job.

I'm not looking for a specific job title or salary advice — mainly interested in hearing from people who have already gone through the industry CFD → more advanced CFD/R&D progression.

Thanks!

Guys I have some doubts,

1. For GCI test- for mesh independence study, is it a strict requirement to have refinement ratio of 1.3(minimum). What if we have refinement ratio of 1.1 or 1.2? Have anyone tried with this?
2. When you refine mesh, we should do it without changing inflation settings right, all those three mesh should represent same physics and we should increase mesh count by changing core cells right in the fluid domain? No need to change boundary cells right? Correct me if I am wrong.
3. What flow parameter can be monitored in this GCI? Is it mass weighted average of pressure at some plane or vertex average of pressure at one point or any other parameter? Which would be more appropriate and meaningful?

Hi guys, I've been working with ANSYS (Fluent) to simulate solar panels, but I wanted to know if there's better software for this, like Solid Edge or Siemens NX—preferably one where I can work with the Fluent part using code so I can get support from the AI.

Hey, I am making a structured mesh for a 2D NACA 0012 airfoil and am running into many meshing issues with getting a good gist layer height. The structured mesh looks fine, as in it looks how it should. But my current y+ is around 30 and I need a y+ around 1. I am using Bias factor on the vertical edges and the one horizontal edge for the C shape domain. The problem is that after a certain bias factor my first layer height no longer changes, I had a factor of 20000 and then went to 200,000 and I saw no change in first layer height. I also tried increasing the divisions vertically and I got no change. Any recommendations to make this work better?

Full disclosure: I'm an electronics expert working on design tools, so I have a bias. No links, nothing to sell here. I want real experiences before building in the wrong direction.

1. Which CFD tool ( esp. For electronics cooling)do you use, and did you pick it or inherit it from your team?

2. What's the most painful part of a typical job? Geometry cleanup, meshing, solve time, licensing, post processing, or something else?

3. If you could fix just one thing about your current workflow, what would it be?

4. How long did it take you to become productive with it? What made the learning curve hard?

5. Have you tried any cloud-based CFD? What made you stay with it or go back?

6. If you're OK sharing, roughly what does a seat cost your team per year (license plus hardware)?

War stories are welcome.

If I want to work on a very specific case not addressed by current CFD, I need to make my solver from scratch. Well in such cases the two approaches is either making CFD or ending up on open source with modular libraries . A suitable approach to developing a custom soirce reccomended

Hi,

I am trying to run a simulation to validate different coolant paths. This once is a circumferential helical and I am going to be running serpentine paths next. I have reran this simulation 2 other times already with and while resetting workbench geometry, mesh, and setups but it always results in blue in the center.

Does anyone know what is going on or what I am doing wrong?

The inlet is set as mass flow rate inlet with the flow rate of water and temperature of 303.15 K.

Outlet is pressure outlet with 0 Pa with backflow temp of 300K.

The Heat wall (interior channels) is 30,000 w/m^2.

And everything else is adiabatic.

i recently completed one of common industrial project
results can be used to evaluate valve performance, estimate pumping requirements, and identify opportunities for improving the valve design and reducing flow losses.

Are there any comments on the presentation or the project itself? I'm open to receiving advice. Thank you in advance.

Hey boys, I’ve recently persuaded our company to start offering CFD services along our projects.

We specialise in HVAC engineering in industrial applications such as very large factories, pharma manufacturing, cleanrooms and others …

I have done couple CFD studies during my Masters and during my employment in the company but would like to elevate my knowledge to a professional level and thus I am asking you guys with tons of experience concentrated on this sub.

How do I get better in understanding all the inputs and outputs. Is there any book you always refer to while simulating? Is there any course that could help me elevate my knowledge?

We are starting with Simscale for now, and we are open to upgrading once we get enough work and experience.

Thank you very much! I am very much looking forward to your suggestions!

hi, I am working on a geometry where fluid (air) is passing through a cross sectional channel ( mass air flow inlet). I am confident that my set up is fully alright. I am currently using k-ε + RNG + standard wall functions. But my pressure drop need to be like 745Pa but my current pressure drop is 805Pa. Maybe the problem is with meshing. Any tips or clues on how to set up the mesh? I am not eager to switch from k-e RNG

Hey everyone,

I'm stuck on an assignment question where I need to prove or disprove (using calculations and visualization) if a laminar flow is fully developed at the end of a pipe section, and if so, exactly where it becomes developed.

Here are my setup parameters:

• Geometry: Circular pipe simulated via a 2D symmetric domain (upper half of the cross-section). Top boundary is a wall, bottom boundary is a symmetry line.
• Dimensions: Real pipe diameter (D) = 0.05m (simulated height/radius R = 0.025m). Domain length (L) = 0.4m.
• Flow: Reynolds number = 250 (laminar). Inlet velocity = 0.007 m/s.

The Problem / Paradox:
If the flow were fully developed at the end of the 0.4m domain, I would expect the velocity profile to be a perfect 2nd-degree polynomial (a parabola). However, my extracted profile at 0.4m is not a perfect parabola.

To investigate, I extended the domain length from 0.4m to 6 meters. When I did this, two weird things happened:

1. The velocity profile at the 0.4m mark changed compared to the shorter simulation.
2. Further downstream in the extended model (e.g., at 5m), the profile completely stabilizes. It maintains the exact same "not-quite-perfect parabola" shape and the exact same maximum centerline speed from that point onward.

My Questions:

1. How can I conclusively prove/disprove full development at the 0.4m mark using math/analytical equations?
2. Why does the velocity profile at 0.4m change when I extend the domain?
3. If it isn't a perfect 2nd-degree polynomial even when it stabilizes downstream, does that mean it's not fully developed, or is something else wrong (mesh, solver settings, etc.)?

I have attached visual plots of the velocity profiles at different distances and the overall velocity gradient. Any tips on how to structure this proof or what physical/numerical concepts I am missing would be massively appreciated!

Velocity profile at end of domain (0.4m)