Release 2020 R1 Update

Fluent

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New Launcher for all Fluent Workspaces

Select among
Meshing and
Solution modes as
well as Application Dimension and
Workspaces Precision auto-update
from stored Mesh/Case
information

Expand for Additional Relevant Session

Options / Links to Options
Learning Resources

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Dockable Task Page / Outline View / Console
Collapse Task Page,
Outline View, and or
Console to window edge

Increase available
Graphics Window size

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New Rendering Effects

Reflections, Shadows, Ground Plane and other effects

can be enabled in the Preferences Dialog Box

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Graphics/Performance Presets
Enhanced Graphics Limited Rendering Capabilities Enhanced Performance

Default depends on available Graphics Hardware:

• Enhanced Graphics if suitable hardware is detected
• Limited Rendering Capabilities otherwise
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Meshing Workflows: Full Boundary Layer flexibility
• Local boundary layers can now be applied to more specific portions of your
model as well, such as only walls, just fluid regions, just solid regions, fluid-
solid interfaces, named regions, or to specific zones or labels.
Meshing Workflows: Watertight Workflow Improvements
• Handling of non-symmetric periodicity

• Store location of zones for persistent meshing

• Several improvements and fixes to Watertight
Workflow in Workbench
• Export of PMDB from SCDM (for Linux)
• Optionally use Size Field in Volume meshing
• Automatic draw of bad volume cells
Meshing Workflows: Watertight Workflow Mesh Pattern
• Create linear arrays of
parts in Watertight
Workflow
• Specialized options for
handing battery topologies
Meshing Workflows: Fault-Tolerant Meshing
• Introduction of Update Boundaries task (similar to Watertight Geometry)
• New Offset Box type in Create Local Refinement Regions task creates a scaled
bounding box
• Identify Deviated Faces task to see how the wrapped surface mesh matches
the original geometry
• Part per body option allows you to import CAD geometry such that all bodies
are available as individual parts in the Model Tree

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 Parallel Poly-Hexcore
• Parallel Poly-Hexcore quality, robustness, scalability improvements

31.5 million element Poly-Hexcore mesh includes

5.2 million Cartesian aligned Hexahedral elements and
15.4 million polyhedral prismatic elements.

10X
speed up
 Parallel Tet-Hexcore

71 million element Tet-Hexcore mesh includes

11.5 million Cartesian aligned Hexahedral elements and
30 million wedge prismatic elements.

9.5X
speed up
 Multi-object distributed parallel volume meshing
-Sequential Meshing

Electric motor case with two mesh objects

34.3 million element Poly-Hexcore mesh

3.8X
speed up
Setup Workflow
Enhancements
Immersive Setup for Common Settings
• When you select zones in
the graphics window, a
quick menu appears with
the most common
boundary conditions
• Easily configure multiple
boundaries together with
Multi-Edit capability
• Click More… to open full
BC dialog box

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Enhanced Multi-Edit Boundary/Cell Zone Dialog Box
• Master Zone determines which zone’s
settings are displayed in the interface
• 2019R3: Master zone determined by
order of zone selection and couldn’t be
changed
◦ You couldn’t remove the current master
zone from the selected boundaries
◦ You couldn’t inspect settings of other zones
• 2020R1: Master Zone can be changed
◦ Easily perform sequential multi-edit
scenarios without closing dialog
◦ Easily inspect settings of each selected zone
before making changes
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Physics Modeling
Enhancements
Turbulence Updates
• New default for viscous model kω-SST
◦ Generally provides more accurate separation behavior than k-ε.
◦ NB: in some cases kω-SST may be less stable than k-ε. In such cases, you can increase kω
a1 constant (to max 1.0) to stabilize the solution (at expense of some accuracy in
prediction of separation onset from smooth surfaces). Alternately, solver settings could be
adjusted.
• Buoyancy effects for the ω-equation in ω-based models (previously only
available for ε-based models
• Synthetic turbulence has been extended for SBES model with a Volumetric
Forcing? Option on pressure and velocity inlets.
◦ Avoids introducing undesirable noise so you can use synthetic turbulence in acoustic
simulations.
Eulerian Multiphase: Workflow Consolidation
2019 R3 • Previously, setting up multiphase cases
required visiting several different dialog
boxes
◦ Top-level model settings
◦ Phase definitions
◦ Phase interactions (momentum, heat, mass
exchange, etc.)
• 2020R1 consolidates into a single dialog box
accessible either from Ribbon or Outline
View

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Eulerian Multiphase: Workflow Consolidation (Models)
2019 R3
2020 R1

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Eulerian Multiphase: Workflow Consolidation (Phases)

2020 R1

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Eulerian Multiphase: Workflow Consolidation (Interaction)

2020 R1

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Eulerian Multiphase: Workflow Consolidation (Pop. Bal.)
2020 R1
• Population Balance is now fully
integrated into Multiphase
workflow
• No longer necessary to load
separate add-on

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Eulerian Multiphase: Regime Transition Barbosa et al.

• Based on Algebraic Interfacial Area Density

(AIAD) approach
• Enhanced to provide more accurate solutions
through:
◦ Incorporation of sub-grid turbulence contribution
◦ Inclusion of mass transfer mechanisms to account for
entrainment/absorption
• With population balance can simulate dispersed
phase size distributions
• Suitable for a range of applications including loss
of coolant scenarios in pressurized-water
reactors
Water : 0.05 m/s (superficial Velocity)
Air: 1m/sec
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Eulerian Multiphase: Regime Transition (Dam Break Test Case)
• Green Water Dambreak from Zhou et al. (1999)
• Comparison with published results from LSI model: Ghada, Elias, Tando and Lo (2015), on “A
Large Scale Interface Multifluid model for Simulating Multiphase Flows”.
• Same conditions were simulated in FLUENT using the AIAD implementation.
• Uniform grid used of 144 x 80.

Initial conditions and different probe locations

Coexistence of small and large scale interface for dam-break simulation (Zhou et al., 1999).
during sloshing of liquid in a cavity (Souto-Iglesias et al., 2011).
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Eulerian Multiphase: Regime Transition (Dam Break Test Case Results)
1 1

0.9 0.9

0.8 0.8

0.7 0.7
Normalised Height

Normalised Height
0.6 0.6

0.5 0.5

0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3

0.2 0.2

0.1 0.1

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Normalised Time Nomalised Time

Interface height temporal variation at H1 (left) and H2 (right)

Experimental Data
FLUENT AIAD
LSI method
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Fluent AIAD produces better match to experimental results at both sampled locations
VOF Enhancements
• Pre-defined adaption criteria for VOF and
VOF-to-DPM simulations
◦ VOF and VOF-to-DPM simulations benefit from
solution-based adaption
◦ Appropriate criteria can be complex
◦ Pre-defined criteria automatically configures
adaption rules with minimal user input
Volume of Fluid: Based on vol. frac. gradient
VOF-to-DPM [Generic]: Based on proximity to VOF interface
VOF-to-DPM [Advanced]: Based on proximity to VOF interface
and cell-size thresholds inside secondary phase region
◦ New numerics settings optimized for robust VOF
simulation

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Multiphase Robustness Enhancements
• For buoyancy-driven multiphase flows, you can now model operating density
using the following new methods:
◦ minimum-phase-averaged (default, appropriate for most cases)
◦ primary-phase-averaged
◦ mixture-averaged
◦ user-input
• Two new two new TUI presets for VOF cases which optimize settings to provide
better stability/robustness:

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Multiphase Robustness Enhancements (cont.)
• Additional advanced stability controls for improved solution stability are now
available
solve/set/multiphase-numerics/advanced-stability-controls/
Refer to documentation for details

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DPM: High-Resolution Tracking
• Alternative particle tracking approach offers
improved robustness, interpolation, and partition-
dependency
◦ Particularly for small particles (i.e. with low relaxation
times)
• Tracks particles through “subtets”
◦ Decompose cells into tets (subtets)
◦ Track through subtets given known connectivity
◦ Continuous interpolation of flow solution
• Compatible with most DPM capabilities
• Exceptions:
◦ Eulerian multiphase / Dense Discrete Phase Model (DDPM)
◦ Overset Meshes
◦ Moving and deforming meshes (MDM)
◦ Discrete element method (DEM)

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DPM High-Resolution Tracking: Example 1

Particles in an accelerating flow

• Hex cell duct
• Comparison of tracking approaches

Standard Tracking

Summary
• Identical results for large to mid sized particles
• Small particles no longer show unphysical kinks
High-Resolution Tracking in velocity
• Improvement due to continuous fluid flow
interpolation
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DPM High-Resolution Tracking: Example 2
Erosion prediction on a curved wall
Influence of number of particles on results

Summary
• High-Resolution tracking shows a
much smoother erosion
distribution even for small number
of particles
• Intersection calculation of high-
resolution tracking is more robust
Standard Tracking High-Res Tracking
1m particles 10k particles and accurate than for standard
tracking

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DPM: Madabhushi Breakup Extensions
• New Column Drag Cd
parameter:
➢ default 1.48 (Madabhushi
2003)
• Drag Law:
➢ UDF function available

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Lagrangian Wall Film Patching
Initialize Wall Film option (Discrete
Phase Model Conditions group box) in
the DPM tab of the Wall dialog box.

• Set values for

‐ Wall film height
‐ Wall film velocity
‐ Film temperature (only if energy is active)
‐ Minimum no of parcels per face
‐ Minimum film parcel surface density
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Lagrangian Wall Film Patching – User Inputs
• Film Height, ℎ𝑓
◦ Film mass on a wall face is computed from 𝑚𝑓 = ℎ𝑓 𝐴𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝜌𝑝
• Minimum Number Of Parcels Per Face
◦ Minimum number of film parcels that are assigned per face. For highly non-uniform meshes, a value of 1 is
recommended.
• Minimum Film Parcel Surface Density
◦ Minimum surface density of the film parcels in [#parcels / m2]. This value will be overridden if the number
calculated from Minimum Number Of Parcels Per Face is larger than the number entered here.
• Initialize From Injection
◦ Used to assign the injection material and the corresponding physical properties to the film.
• In addition, you can reset the LWF to zero from the Solution Initialization task page by
clicking Reset LWF. This will delete the LWF film particles as well as zero out the
corresponding face variables without affecting the free stream particles.

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Coupled Time Marching for Eulerian Wall-Film
• In some applications (e.g. gravity-
driven falling films) film height and
momentum are tightly coupled
• In such cases, a coupled solution
approach is required to adequately
capturing resulting film dynamics
(e.g. capillary waves)

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Nonadiabatic FGM with Premixed Flamelets
• Improves accuracy in cases where heat loss/gain
due to presence of cold walls, participating media,
etc. cannot be neglected
• Parallel FGM Flamelet and PDF creation
CO Mass Fraction OH Mass Fraction
Partially Premixed Ch4-Air Flame with cold walls
=> High heat loss near flame stabilization

FGM results are validated with Finite Rate Solution

Non-adiabatic FGM (NFGM) predicts the sensitivity of
species to heat loss
AFGM : FGM based on adiabatic Flamelets
FGM based on adiabatic flamelets (AGM) cannot
capture the impact of heat loss on species prediction NFGM : FGM based on non-adiabatic Flamelets
FR : Finite Rate Chemistry Solution
FGM Finite Rate Robustness and Convergence improvement
Improved
• New more robust numerics used FGM
by default for transient FGM
Finite Rate with DPM
1d high pressure freely propagating premix flame

Turbulent premixed V-flame

Schematic of the case: Flame stabilized on a rod

 FGM Finite Rate Robustness and Convergence improvement Test
Turbulent Premixed V-Flame Default FGM Improved FGM
Flame is anchored on a Rod
RANS and LES computations done with FGM

Schematic of the case: Flame Instantaneous flame surface,

stabilized on a rod Bell et. al. #

Improved FGM leads to faster convergence

and no compromise in accuracy

#“Numerical Simulation of a laboratory-scale turbulent V-flame”

J.B. Bell, M.S. Day, I.G. Shepherd, M. R. Johnson, R. K. Cheng, J. F. Grcar, V. E. Beckner, and M. J. Lijewski
Detailed 3D electro-chemistry modeling for Li-ion battery
Target users: battery cell and material manufacturers
Transient simulation of Li ion transport during battery discharging/charging

Lithium-metal-oxide
Graphite based compound
material (LiCoO2, LMO,NMC)

Lithium-deintercalation at anode Lithium-intercalation at cathode

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3D Electrochemistry Example
5C Discharge
2 min
Li+

4 min
Li+

4
6 min
Li+ 3.8
1C Discharge
5C Discharge

Cell Voltage (V)

3.6
8 min
Li+ 3.4

3.2
10 min
Li+ 3
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
SOC
Lithium-deintercalation
• Cell voltage at 1C and 5C discharging rate.
Anode Cathode • Contour plots of Li concentration within electrodes
during 5C discharging.
Lithium-intercalation at cathode
GUI-based NTGK and ECM parameter estimation tool
• Equivalent Circuit Method (ECM) and NTGK methods depend on parameters which are
typically determined by Parameter Estimation tool in Fluent
• Parameter Estimation tool now has a GUI front-end for loading files and computing
parameters.

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One-to-One Automatic Interface Pairing
• Automatically detect and create one-to-one
connection pairs among bodies
• Body faces can have multiple adjacencies; no need
to intersect faces during meshing
• Works on selections of wall zones as well as
interface zones

TUI: /define/mesh-interfaces/auto-pairing-one-to-one
Radiation
• Specify both diffuse and direct boundary source for Monte Carlo
• Automatic direction calculation for sources for DO and Monte
Carlo models
◦ De-select Apply Direction Irradiation Parallel to the Beam to interpret
specified Direct Irradiation as normal to the boundary
Kirchoff Integral for Acoustic Wave Eqn Solver
• Integral method for sound propagation to far-field
• Can use any closed surface as integral surface (not just
zone surfaces, as with FW-H)

Notes:
◦ The Moving Receivers option is supported only by the FW-H
model. Moving Receivers input is ignored if the Kirchhoff model is
used
◦ Only “on-the-fly” computation is currently available with Kirchoff
integral

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Structural Model Enhancements
• Nonlinear Elasticity
◦ Accounts for large-deformation of solid which affects
stiffness matrix.
• Compatibility with wedge / pyramid cell-types added
• Von Mises equivalent stress is now available as a
postprocessing quantity

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Cosimulation with FMU
• Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) is an open standard allowing different software to exchange information
during coupled simulations. Function Mock-up Unit (FMU) is a file written out according FMI standard.
• Fluent now supports loading FMU files in a co-simulation of battery thermal pack system.

TwinBuilder or other
third-party software
(Simulink, Matlab ...)

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 Solver Enhancements

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Numerics: Multiple Reference Pressures
• Reference pressure is used to prevent gauge
pressure from floating in incompressible
flows without pressure boundaries
• In cases with disconnected flow regions, it
can be desirable to apply reference pressure
individually to each region
◦ E.g. one region may have pressure boundary while
another region does not. Use Multiple reference
pressure method to use a reference pressure in
the region without pressure condition.

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One-to-One Automatic Interface Pairing
• Automatically detect and create one-to-one
connection pairs among bodies
• Body faces can have multiple adjacencies; no need
to intersect faces during meshing
• Works on selections of wall zones as well as
interface zones

TUI: /define/mesh-interfaces/auto-pairing-one-to-one
GUI-Based Universal Periodic Creation
• Select any two Boundary Zones (in Outline View or
Graphics Window)
• Right-click and select Periodic…
• Same workflow for conformal and non-conformal
periodicity
• Fluent can automatically determine conformality or
user can enforce

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Overset Mesh Enhancements 14M Poly cell case on 64 cores

• New cell exchange model is used with

improved parallel memory efficiency
• Less restrictive NCI compatibility check
◦ Use NCI and Overset together provided NCI
does not overlap Overset region
• Turbulence transition model support
◦ Transition SST
◦ Intermittency Transition
◦ Transition k-kl-omega

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Adjoint Solver
• Usability Enhancements
◦ Support “Autosave” cas/dat files during the adjoint calculation
◦ Support “Execute command” during the adjoint calculation

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 Graphics / Post

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New Rendering Effects

Reflections, Shadows, Ground Plane and other effects

can be enabled in the Preferences Dialog Box

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Graphics/Performance Presets
Enhanced Graphics Limited Rendering Capabilities Enhanced Performance

Default depends on available Graphics Hardware:

• Enhanced Graphics if suitable hardware is detected
• Limited Rendering Capabilities otherwise
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Contour and Color Shortcuts
Right Click with surfaces selected to Color By a selected color or field variable
contour

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New Interactive Plane Surface Creation
New Plane Tool incorporated into all
plane creation methods
Plane Tool Enhancements
• More Intuitive handles
• Drag along axis or quadrant to
perform constrained translation /
rotation
• Drag origin point to free move
• Dynamic display update during
manipulation
Plane Surface Creation Methods
Consolidation into three method types with supporting options
• XY, YZ, YZ Plane Methods
‐ {X, Y, Z}: location coordinate along the plane normal. Direct entry or Select with
Mouse
• Point and Normal Method
‐ Point: Direct entry or Select with Mouse
‐ Normal: Direction Cosines, Compute from Surface, or Compute from View Plane
• Three Points Method
‐ Point {1,2,3}: Direct entry or Select with Mouse
‐ Bounded: surface bounds are defined by the
specified points rather than domain extents
‐ Sample Points: instead of a faceted surface,
create an array of points that can be used for
vertex reporting or as seeds for vectors/pathlines

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Three Points Method
Bounded Off

Bounded with Sample Points Bounded On

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New Point Tool
• Show point tool by default
• Removed Select Point With Mouse, now
select point using RMB, when panel is open
• New Surface Name renamed to Name
• x0, y0, z0 rename to x, y, z

• New point tool

• Drag in specific direction by holding axes
of triad
• Free drag in any direction by holding
center ball
New Plot Types
Data Sources
• Combine data from solution XY plots, Report Plots,
external data files, etc.
• Supports multi-columnar data and files with multiple
data sections
Cumulative Plot
• Plot cumulative force / moment data long specified axis

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 Migration Considerations

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Deprecation Notices
• Running in –t0 mode (or –tm0 meshing mode) is no longer possible from the
Launcher. Command line –t0 / -tm0 is still available in 2020R1 but is unsupported.
◦ In future versions of Fluent, -t0 –tm0 will be removed completely.
◦ Please report any issues you encounter with –t1 (Serial in the Launcher)
• CutCell remeshing method with Dynamic Mesh is deprecated and no longer available
• RSH is no longer available for spawning remote Linux nodes due to security issues.
Use SSH instead.
• The tpoly utility is removed. If you previously required tpoly you can use either of
the following alternatives:
◦ Read your mesh into Fluent Meshing and write it out with the Write As Polyhedra option enabled
◦ Read your mesh into Fluent Solution mode and use mesh/polyhedral/convert-hanging-nodes

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Other Migration Considerations
• Case/Data files will now be written in the *.cas.h5 / *.dat.h5 (CFF) format by
default, which offers much better performance, esp. for large cases in parallel
◦ Benchmark results averaged over cases 4M to 150M cells and 40 cores to 1280 cores
‒ Case write performance average of ~10x to ~20x faster than legacy
‒ Case read performance ~50% - ~100% improvement
‒ Data write average ~5x faster for compressed files, ~30% faster for uncompressed files
‒ Data read ~15% - ~30% faster, except for small compressed cases where some degradation ~20% is observed.

User Preference available to revert to legacy

format if desired
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Other Migration Considerations (cont.)
• New default for viscous model is kω-SST (previously Laminar)
• Polyhedra Unstructured Mesh Adaption (PUMA ) is now used by default in 3D
cases.
• Robustness/performance enhancements and defect corrections may result in
solution differences in some cases.
• Refer to Migration Manual for complete details
◦ You can access Release Notes and Migration Manual
from the Launcher by expanding Learning Resources
(requires internet connectivity)

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