Application Tutorial 7.

1a:
Elbow Adaption

Fundamentals and Application of CFD

Master’s
Master’s DegreeDegree
ininNumerical
Numerical Simulation in Engineering
Simulation with Ansys with Ansys
in Engineering
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1Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - Ansys 12th EDITION
 Introduction
• Workshop Description:
• Mesh sensitivity analysis is realized using several mesh adaption of the original elbow case solved
previously in the Module.

• Learning Aims:
• This workshop has shown the basic steps to use mesh adaption:
• Create a 2D plot
• Mark cells to be refine based on gradient information
• Adapt the mesh
• Compare results

• Learning Objectives:
• To understand how to the mesh refinement could influence the CFD results in term of accuracy and speed
of the solver.

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 Open Ansys Fluent (Stand-alone)
• Launch Fluent from the Start Menu
• Start Menu > Ansys > Fluent
- Select “Solution”
- Select “3D”, “Double Precision” and “Display Mesh After Reading”
- Select the working directory you are using on your machine

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 Original Elbow Case
• Read the Fluent cas and dat file (from the startup folder) : elbow.cas (File > Read > Case&Data).
• Display the mesh.

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 Iso-surfaces
• Create 2 iso-surfaces: Domain > Surface > Create > Iso-Surface…
• Select Surface of Constant: “Mesh” and Click “Compute”
• Retain the default value of 0 meters for Iso-Values.
• Enter “x-0” outlet for New Surface Name.
• Click Create

A plane at X=0 is created

• Then Select “outlet” in From Surface list

• Enter “x-0-out” outlet for New Surface Name.
• Click Create
A line at X=0 on the outlet
face is created

• Close Iso-surface panel

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 Iso-surfaces
• Display the iso-surfaces: General > Mesh > Display
– Display the “x-0” and “x-0-out” consecutively

These iso-surfaces are to used to check the mesh refinement and to plot temperatures.

x-0

x-0-out

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 Contours
• Display Temperature contours: Graphics > Contours > New
• Configure your plot as below:

Note: Residuals
monitor and
plots may differ
between two
computers or
Ansys releases

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 Plots
• Plot Temperature at the outlet line: Results > Plots > XY Plots > New
• Configure your contours as below:

• Select Write to File and click Write

• Save the file as “elb.xy”
• Press Save/Plot
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 Adapting the mesh
• The elbow solution can be improved further by refining the mesh to
better resolve the flow details. In the following steps, you will adapt
the mesh based on the temperature gradients in the current
solution.
• Adapt the mesh in the regions of high temperature gradients:
• Domain > Adapt > Manual…
• In the panel select Cell Registers > New > Field Variable
• Select Temperature... from the Field Value drop-down list
• Type = Cells More Than
• Derivative Option = Curvature
• Click Compute
Ansys Fluent will update the Min and Max values
• Enter 0.018 for “Cells having value more than”
It is a good rule of thumb to use 10% of the maximum gradient
when setting the value for Refine Threshold
• Click Save/Display
Ansys Fluent will report in the console that approximately 1970 cells were
marked for adaption.
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 Adapting the mesh
• Click Manual... to open the Manage Mesh Adaptation
dialog box :
• Click Display Options…
• Apply the followings:
• Display only x-0 to visualize better in Draw Mesh
• Click OK and Go back to the Manage Mesh Adaptation
panel
• Click Display
These are the cells that are going to be refined.

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 Adapting the mesh
• Go back to the Manage Mesh Adaptation panel:
• Click on Adapt
A Question dialog box will open, confirming your intention to adapt the mesh. Click Yes to proceed.

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 Adapting the mesh
The mesh has been refined : from ~34K elements to ~41k elements
• Display the mesh again
– General > Mesh > Display
• Display “x-0”

Original Adapted

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 Run Calculation
• Run Calculation
• Click on Calculate
The case starts iterating from the previous results and converges in about approximately 140 additional iterations
• Save the results: File > Write> Case&Data… as “elbow_adp1.gz”

This is an extra case

That was done in order to
check
The convergence.
You may not see that
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 Post-processing
• Repeat the post-processing operation from slides 7 and 8.
• Write the XY Plot as “elb_adp1.xy”
• Disable “Write to File” and Plot
Note that you can load the previously saved *.xy file to simultaneously plot the two set of data (Load File…)

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 Adapt and Re-run
• Repeat the adaption and run calculation processes with the following set-up

~100 iterations to converge

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 Post-processing
• Repeat the post-processing operation from slides 7 and 8.
• Write the XY Plot as “elb_adp2.xy”

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 Adapt and Re-run
• Repeat the adaption and run calculation processes again with the following set-up

~133 iterations to converge

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 Post-processing
• Repeat the post-processing operation from slides 7 and 8.
• Write the XY Plot as “elb_adp3.xy”

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 Post-processing - Comparision
• XY Plots

Original

Adapted 3 Cases Number of cells

(x1000)
Original 34
Adaption 1 41
Adaption 2 66
Adaption 3 155

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 Post-processing - Comparision
• Contours of static temperatures (K)

Original Adapted 1

Adapted 2
Adapted 3

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 Summary
• It is apparent by comparing both the shape of the profiles and the predicted static temperature contours
that the solution is highly dependent on the mesh. Specifically, further adaption should be used in order to
obtain a solution that is independent of the mesh.

• If computational resources allow, it is always recommended to perform successive rounds of adaption or

manual mesh refinements (going back to the mesher and change mesh settings) until the solution is
independent of the mesh (within an acceptable tolerance). Typically, integral values (massflow rate, drag,
lift, …) or profiles of important variables are to be compared to determine mesh independence.

• The goal of the tutorial was to raise awareness on the importance of evaluating the accuracy of a CFD
solution with respect to discretization errors.

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