SIMULIA XFlow CFD

High Fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics

XFlow CFD Multifluids & multiphysics Fluid Dynamics to predict transient dynamic behaviour

 

Automatic Lattice Generation

XFlow CFD minimizes user inputs while reducing time and effort in the pre-processing phase of a typical CFD workflow.

Adaptive Wake Refinement

XFlow can refine the quality of the solution in flow and near the walls, dynamically adapting to the presence of strong gradients and refining the wake as the flow develops.

Fast simulation setup

XFlow CFD is very user friendly and allows you to set-up your CFD simulations fast and straight forward.

Turbulence modeling: High fidelity WMLES

XFlow CFD features the highest fidelity Wall-Modeled Large Eddy Simulation (WMLES) approach to the turbulence
modeling.

XFlow CFD

A unique, fast, powerful and scalable CFD approach

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Multiphase and free-surface flow models

The interface enables you to easlily set-up your own multiphase and free-surface flow models through a user friendly graphical user interface.
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Fluid Structure Interaction - FSI with Abaqus and others

FSI with Abaqus; Simpack, Dymola, MSC.ADAMS, and OpenModelica via FMI. One-way coupling with CST, Post-processing with ParaView, EnSight Gold and CGNS; Optimization with CASES and ModeFrontier; DEM with EDEM; direct import of CATIA parts.

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Near-linear scalable performance

Fast, efficient and accessible even on a standard desktop PC. XFlow is fully parallelized for multi-core technology with near-linear scalability. XFlow also offers perfect integration in HPC environments. The distributed solver scales efficiently even for a large number of nodes.
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XFlow CFD for Multiple Industries

Diverse industry specific capabilities to capture and predict many different behaviours.

Automotive

XFlow possibilities explained for automotive industry

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Aerodynamics & Virtual Wind Tunnel

Compute aerodynamic loads over complex geometry, including rotating wheels and moving parts. Analyze overtaking or dynamic systems like vehicle suspension through co-simulation with external Multi-Body Dynamic (MBD) software. The virtual wind tunnel module includes a moving ground option and enables users to setup simulations in record time.
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Acoustics

Use XFlow CFD for reduction of aerodynamic noise levels in and around vehicles like HVAC Systems, sideview mirrors and open windows effects. Xflow computes pressure wave propagation instead of modeling the radiation propagation of such waves. Including many acoustics post-processing features such as FFT, PSD, SPL, windowing, signal filtering and band-pass filter pressure field visualization which allow a full acoustic analysis to be performed inside XFlow.
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Water Management

The Free-surface solver of XFlow CFD allows water management analysis to be performed, such as flow inside the rain chamber, refueling process, tank sloshing or a drive through of a complete vehicle with real rotating wheels. The adaptive refinement of XFlow dynamically refines water splashing areas while saving elements on other more stable regions, reducing overall simulation time.
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Internal Flow

Under hood aerodynamic flows or internal air circulation inside the car cabin can be easily simulated using XFlow CFD through a straightforward workflow. The particle-based approach avoids the time-consuming traditional meshing process. Moreover, the particle-based method of XFlow allows under hood analysis with many complex, arbitrary moving geometries and porous media to be performed, skipping the long meshing process usually required to prepare such simulations.
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Powertrain & Gearboxes

XFlow is used by leading powertrain manufacturers for lubrication applications, mass flow distribution through rotating shafts and gear torque prediction. XFlow CFD uses multiphase solvers that accurately solve the interaction between any two immiscible fluids and easily handles perfect contacts between real unsimplified moving gears without any specific preliminary preparation.
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Thermal Analysis

Vehicle internal heating, ventilation or air conditioning are simulated through the thermal capabilities integrated in XFlow CFD. These capabilities allow both thermal convection in the fluid and thermal conduction inside solids (Conjugate Heat Transfer) to be solved, which are very well suited for engine cooling analysis applications.

Aerospace

XFlow possibilities explained for aerospace industry

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Aerodynamics

The Single phase solver of XFlow CFD is used by major companies in the aerospace industry. The accuracy of this solver for predicting aircraft aerodynamic behavior has been very well validated on several reference benchmarks such as the 1st and 2nd AIAA High Lift Prediction Workshops, as well as on several applications such as buffet-onset detection and post-stall conditions. The Virtual wind Tunnel of XFlow reduces the setup time of any external aerodynamic analysis.
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Flight Dynamics

The interaction between aircrafts and aerodynamics is one of the new areas explored by CFD. XFlow provides the means to investigate aircraft response subject to aerodynamic loads thanks to its Rigid Body Dynamics capabilities and ability to handle arbitrary moving parts.
XFlow CFD is capable of simulating aerospace applications involving moving parts. This unique capability allows the running of full polar sweep analysis, flaps deployment dynamics, landing gear deployment, turbofan or helicopter blade rotations and any other flight maneuvers.
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Fluid Structure Interaction

XFlow has demonstrated its ability to reproduce results of aircraft behaviors only observable in real flight conditions such as spin control, pitch damping, dutch roll, and ice shedding separation and even FSI with deformable geometries using co-simulations with Abaqus, and co-simulations with external MBD software (through FMI standard) to perform complete analysis of ailerons and elevators deployment. XFlow makes it possible to study behaviors that cannot be reproduced in wind tunnels nor in real flights test, such as aircraft ditching.
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Thermal Analysis

The coupling between energy and momentum equations is ensured in XFlow by several thermal models that can be used to simulate the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system in an aircraft cabin. Thermal post-processing is straightforward and allows visualization of the evolution of the temperature field inside the aircraft cabins, and measurement of the temperature on the passengers, on a given location using a probe, line, surface or inside a volume.

Manufacturing

XFlow possibilities explained for manufacturing industry

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Fans & MIxers

XFlow CFD is used to simulate real rotating fans or alternatively model them using a simplified fan boundary condition. Agitators and mixers for the chemical industry, water treatment plants or even domestic devices are easily simulated. It solves single and two-phase flows for immiscible fluids including surface tension. Scalar transport models are available and can be used to track the fluids mixing evolution.
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Nozzles & Sprays

Fluid atomization and spray droplets are simulated using the free-surface or multiphase solver in XFlow and tracked dynamically with the adaptive refinement feature which dynamically and locally refines the regions where the droplets are splashing. Such a capability makes some automotive applications possible by CFD such as windshield washer nozzles or carbody spraypaint.
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Valves & Pumps

XFlow CFD easily handles moving parts with Enforced and Rigid Body Dynamics behavior which is suitable for Valve applications where it is very important to simulate the valve dynamics. It is also possible to specify a law to model the spring force applied on the valve. XFlow has already demonstrated its accuracy in predicting the pressure drop as a function of the flow inside the valves as well as the vibrations and instabilities of valves. Centrifugal or displacement pumps are set up and simulated very easily, not only for isolated operational points but also for full cycles or accidental events in which the engineer wants to analyze in detail the transient dynamics of the system.
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Thermal Analysis

The thermal fluid applications can be solved with XFlow thanks to the different thermal solvers available in the code. It allows thermal analysis together with aerodynamic analysis to be performed, which is very important for cooling/heating problems. The Conjugate Heat Transfer model allows the conduction inside solids to be solved and simulates, for example, how a hot external flow affects the internal temperature distribution inside a solid. For manufacturing applications where electronics components are placed close to heat sources, the radiation contribution is very important. XFlow provides a surface-to-surface radiation model where the emissivity coefficient of each surface can be specified in order to solve the contribution of each surface in the global thermal analysis.
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Multiphase Flow

State-of the-art multiphase solvers are implemented in XFlow in order to enable the user to solve the interaction between two fluids at different scales with different density and viscosity ratios, for inertial or viscous dominant applications. These multiphase solvers give the possibility to simulate a wide range of manufacturing applications such as bubbles creation, fluids mixing, lubrication and fluid atomization.
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Non-Newtonian Flow

Highly viscous non-Newtonian fluids (e.g. melted plastic, molding, chemical blends, toothpaste) are common in many industrial applications. The complex rheological properties of these fluids can be introduced in XFlow CFD by using the predefined viscosity models available (Newtonian, Sutherland, Cross, Herschel-Bulkley, Power Law, Carreau) or user-defined functions.

Energy

XFlow possibilities explained for Energy industry

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Wind Power

The unsteady aerodynamics of wind turbines can easily be analyzed in XFlow’s virtual wind tunnel. The rotor can either spin freely due to the torque exerted by the wind or enforced motion can be applied . The simulation can assess the efficiency of the turbine and predict loads on blades, wake turbulence intensity, or interference effects in wind farms. It is also possible to simulate different wind turbines simultaneously in order to study how the wake of each turbine is affecting the efficiency of the one behind it.
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Hydro Power

Multi-body dynamics can be coupled to free surface analysis. For example devices that extract energy from sea waves are allowed to move, and the constraints between the different bodies can be specified or resolved by the contact between the real geometries. Water wheels to extract energy from water currents can also be simulated in XFlow with the Rigid Body Dynamics capability that allows the geometries to move with up to 6 degrees of freedom under the fluid loads.
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Solar Energy

The loads over solar collectors can easily be simulated. XFlow can provide averaged pressure distributions and transient data of maximum and minimum peak loads. The thermal solver allows you to simulate flows driven by natural or forced convection for energy transformation devices, such as a solar tower. In this case the air contained in a collector is heated by the sun, and the resulting natural convection causes air to rise up the tower and to move a turbine, which produces electricity.
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Oil & Gas

Several applications in the Oil & Gas industry can be simulated in XFlow with its state-of-the art multiphase solvers that accurately solve the surface tension effects at large and small scales, and solves different ratios of density and viscosity. The computation of permeability curves, multiphase flow regime prediction, oil/gas pipe flow and fluid mixing are examples of the applications that XFlow allows many Oil & Gas companies to solve.

Marine

XFlow possibilities explained for Marine industry

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Hydrodynamics

XFlow provides a virtual water channel module for free surface simulations. It can be used to analyze the flow around ship hulls, predict their resistance, seakeeping, loads on components, and the downstream wake of both surface and submerged watercraft.
The adaptive refinement algorithm of XFlow can also detect and refine dynamically and automatically the ship wake and the free-surface of the fluid. For sailing boats, the multiphase solvers of XFlow allows both hydrodynamic analysis on the boat and aerodynamic analysis on the sail to be performed at the same time.
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Boat Dynamics

XFlow can be used to simulate moving parts rigid dynamics behavior, such as boat dynamics with six degrees of freedom, this feature allows the effect of the change of the heave on the roll or yaw angle of the boat or the effect of an increasing inlet flow on the roll angle of the boat to be analyzed dynamically. XFlow is also well suited to simulate moving parts with enforced behavior such as to carry out boat maneuvers simulations or carrier ships simulations with real rotating propellers or modeled ones.
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Waves

The solver supports progressive waves boundary conditions by implementing linear and fifth order Stokes theory to simulate a wide range of sea conditions. This is suitable for studying seakeeping of boat hulls, for predicting floating buoy behaviour, or for measuring the impact of the waves on off-shore structures such as oil platforms or bridge pillars. It is also possible to use a porous volume to model the beach and study wave dissipation on the coast.
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Sailing

XFlow multiphase capabilities allow hydrodynamic analysis on the submerged boat region and aerodynamic analysis on the wind exposed region to be performed at the same time. This possibility to simulate both the interaction of the air and water with the boat makes XFlow suitable for sailing applications where both physics are closely related. Moreover, co-simulations with Abaqus or other structural solvers (through Open FSI and FMI standard) are available in XFlow which even allows inclusion of the sail deformation in this kind of application.

Civil Engineering

XFlow possibilities explained for Civil Engineering industry

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Wind Load

The virtual wind tunnel module enables you to simulate full-scale models and set inlet turbulence intensity and analytical expressions to describe a realistic incoming wind profile. XFlow simulations allow you to measure wind loads on buildings, bridges and other civil structures, analyze the air flow around them or the pressure distribution over their facades.
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Heating, Ventilation, Airconditioning & Cooling (HVAC)

The thermal solver can be used to simulate the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems of indoor spaces. With the help of probes, surface and volume integrals to monitor the flow variables in specified locations, XFlow is a suitable tool to optimize the design of HVAC devices outlets and also their location for thermal comfort and better cooling/heating efficiency. Internal flows can also be complemented by the Discrete Phase Model (DPM) of XFlow in order to simulate the transport of particles that are very suitable to simulate the dust transport in indoor spaces.
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Water Management

Water behavior over civil structures is one of the major issues of civil engineering. This can be studied now at full scale thanks to the virtual Water Chanel of XFlow or any other geometry that could be used as internal fluid domain. XFlow has already demonstrated its capability to reproduce flows in real water channels, dam breaking, tsunami catastrophes, flow around immersed bridge pillars, and water conduction in road infrastructures. Pollutant diffusion inside water can also be analyzed using the scalar transport models of XFlow where several scalars can be defined according to their density and a diffusivity coefficient.

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