One of the grey areas of Simulation swirl around the SolidWorks Flow productline, where the capabilities and limitations are critical to ensure successful implementation. Earlier this week, we had a potential customer inquire into the functional capabilities of Flow Simulation.

Flow Simulation is an excellent mid-range fluid flow product if you are trying to simulate anything from liquids to gas flow. It can be utilized in a wide range of applications from electronics to valves to HVAC to medical and automotive/aerospace applications, and also  where fluid flow coupled with thermal analysis is a requirement.

Below is a compiled list of the capabilities and limitations of the SolidWorks Flow Simulation productline as of 2009:

What Flow Simulation can do 

• Incompressible (liquid or gas) or compressible (gas) viscous flow including subsonic, transonic and supersonic regimes
• External and/or internal flows
• Non-Newtonian Flows (Viscous fluids such as blood)
• Automatic laminar/turbulent solution with transition
• Wall roughness model
• Swirling flows and fans (fan curves)
• One component or up to ten independent species -liquid-liquid mixing, or gas-gas mixing
• Forced, free or mixed convection – heat transfer
• Conjugated heat transfer (fluid, solid), conduction and convection
• Porous Media
• Radiation
• Steady state and Transient (time-dependent) fluid flow
• Rotating Frames of Reference
• TEC coolers/heat sink emulators/Thermostats
• Cavitation
• Relative Humidity

What Flow Simulation cannot do 

• Phase Change - The Flow package cannot handle materials cooling and transforming from gas-to-liquid, or molten liquid-to-solid. Similarly, it cannot handle materials heating from molten solid-to-liquid, or liquid-to-gas. This requires special high-end non-linear and complex formulations specifically for modeling entropy and chemical/molecular changes to account for cool down etc. Eg: plastic flow throw an injection mold as it cools and solidifies.
• Co-existence of different phases – Flow Simulation cannot simulate a liquid and a gas in the same cavity. For instance, water flowing out of a nozzle into air (since water and air exist in the same cavity after the water flows out). Similarly, sprays (where fluid bubbles are sprayed into air). Different fluids (liquids/gases) can co-exist in a Flow Simulation if they exist in different cavities or volumes.
• Free Surface Phenomena – Flow Simulation cannot simulate the top layer of a liquid sitting in an open tank. This again requires highly non-linear and complex formulae that are characteristic of high-end packages.
• Moving bodies - Flow Simulation cannot simulate bodies moving and displacing fluids as they move. This requires special high-end focused packages that can handle Fluid-Structure-Interaction (FSI).
• Combustion – Flow Simulation cannot perform chemical reactions to account for combustion.
• Particles/Suspensions – Flow Simulation cannot simulate solid/liquid suspensions in a fluid where the suspensions can influence the pattern/parameters of flow. Since Flow Simulation cannot have two different phases in the same volume, it does not support solid particles in a fluid stream/liquid particles in a fluid stream/gas trapped in a liquid stream etc.

People ask me if it is difficult working with Don Hope.

Hardly.

When working with Don companies always roll out the red carpet.

Don Hope and Jeff Sweeney make a visit in Sidney Ohio