CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

23 July 2007

Product News

ESI Group CFD-ACE+ Offers Faster Solution for Multiphysics Modeling

ESI Group released version 2007.2 of its multiphysics software CFD-ACE+, The V2007.2 release supplements the October release of V2007.0 with significant product enhancements and more than fifty maintenance requests offering increased accuracy, robustness and efficiency. The shorter development cycle is implemented to better serve our customers as they can immediately take advantage of the new features and their benefits.

Simulation of turbomachinery such as fans, compressors and pumps has long been a challenge because of their inherent design of moving and stationery components requiring them to be solved under computationally expensive transient condition. CFD-ACE+ V2007.2 employs Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) to solve turbo characteristics in a steady state manner without the need to physically rotate the parts. This advancement provides quick and accurate results to evaluate different design alternatives even before the physical prototype is built.

Volume of Free Surfaces (VOF) for unstructured meshes eliminates the requirement of structured mesh for complex geometries. The automatic nature of the techniques used to create unstructured meshes saves user's time and effort, and, since in many cases an unstructured mesh contains many fewer cells than the corresponding hexahedral grid, time to solution can be faster. This feature will benefit users of free surface applications in large scale applications, where surface tension is not important, such as the marine and consumer packaging industries.

Fast Time Stepping Scheme, a major solver enhancement, allows faster solution for complex and expensive transient problems. This scheme precludes multiple global iterations (the iterations wrapped around the entire set of equations) within each time-step. Instead, a number of sub-iterations are performed on individual equations followed by a single global iteration to obtain a solution. Using one global iteration rather than tens or hundreds drastically reduces the amount of CPU time needed for each timestep.

"Increasing functionality and increasing productivity has always been our goal. The new features of V2007.2 are a strong reflection of that target; our team has invested significant time in listening to customer needs and has implemented the features they requested. While the new computing methodology provides a leap in performance, features like MRF drive down the simulation time and cost" says Richard Thoms, ESI group's CFD Product Manager.

Among other additional functionalities V2007.2 offers:

•  Electrochemistry improvements for electroplating and fuel cell applications

•  Enhancement in electromagnetic user sub routines for semiconductor customers

•  The addition of Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) and v2f turbulence models

•  A new transition turbulence model for more accuracy with transitional flows

CFD-ACE+ V2007.2 is available for immediate shipment. For product configuration and pricing information, please email Sri Nagarajan at info.cfd@esi-group-na.com

Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.

Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.

CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.

Subscribe