CD-adapco Releases STAR-CCM+ V3.04

By DE Editors

For everything ranging from a tanker listing under heavy seas to an aerodynamic body tumbling in free fall, the Dynamic Fluid Body Interaction (DFBI) model in CD-adapco’s (New York and London) latest STAR-CCM+ V3.04 enables engineers to easily simulate the fluid-induced movement of a body.

At each time-interval, this latest version of the process-oriented computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software calculates the forces and moments acting on the body by automatically integrating the pressure and frictional loads before calculating the acceleration, velocity, and displacement in six degrees of freedom.

Rather than using complex mesh distortion or interpolation across sliding boundaries, the DFBI model works by translating and rotating the entire computational domain in response to the fluid-induced load. STAR-CCM+ V3.04 then updates the flow field for the new body position and, iterating this procedure over time, calculates the trajectory of the body.

DFBI is useful for any simulation in which an unrestrained object moves in response to fluid excitation. However, it is particularly useful when combined with STAR-CCM+ V3.04’s free surface modeling capability, to simulate the behavior of floating vessels such as boats. For large amplitude motions, such as a container ship navigating heavy seas, the DFBI model can be used to simulate wave slamming, capsizing, wave-piercing, water-entry and green water effects.

STAR-CCM+ V3.04 also includes an automatic wave generator, as well as an automatic hexahedral mesher to refine cells in specific directions allowing greater control of cell count without compromising accuracy. A new surface offset tool has been added to the Surface Preparation GUI to ease and speed-up the handling of complex and poor geometry.

For details, contact CD-adapco.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.