Fluid flow modeling is typically referred to as computational fluid dynamics or more simply CFD.  It is used to solve fluid flow models in a variety of industries: room heating and cooling in HVAC industry, air flow over and around automotive designs, mixing tanks in the pharmaceutical industry, chemical vapor deposition in electronic packaging industry, supersonic airflow in the aerospace industry and the list goes on.  Practically any industry that deals with any type of fluid flow issue can benefit from CFD.

With the acquisition of the Fluent and CFX suites of CFD simulation software, ANSYS, Inc. is the worldwide CFD leader, by far.   SimuTech Group provides sales, support and training for both Fluent and CFX software programs as well as the various industry specific programs such as Icepak and Icechip.

While there is some overlap between CFD capabilities offered by Fluent and CFX, each offers unique capabilities (e.g. CFX for rotating machinery and Fluent for chemical reaction) and price points.  Please feel free to contact us or you may wish to review the CFD Comparison Chart.

Most CFD analyses are straightforward.  A valve manufacturer in the oil and gas industry wants to model the flow of natural gas in a valve body.  The velocities and pressures can be easily determined by a CFD analysis.  However, the CFD analysis also be used to perform a heat transfer analysis (conduction, convection and radiation) for the valve body in what is commonly called a conjugate heat transfer analysis.  Additional, the pressures, temperatures and convective coefficients can be used in a structural analysis in what is commonly called a fluid structure interaction or FSI.  In this last case, both CFD and FEA simulation software are required.