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Eric Grald, Materials Industry Director, Fluent Inc.
The term “materials processing” conjures up an amazingly wide
range of applications and industries, including (but certainly not limited
to) semiconductor manufacturing, glass, polymers, non-woven materials,
consumer products, food, and metals. The analysis needs of these industries
are similarly broad, not to mention complex: chemical reactions, plasma
physics, multiphase flow, radiation, phase change, generalized non-Newtonian
rheology, free surfaces, fluid-structure interaction, porous media, and
many more.
Fluent is able to meet these diverse needs through a trio of industry-leading
products: FLUENT, FIDAP, and POLYFLOW. By drawing on the unique strengths
of these programs, customers are able to realize the true potential of
CFD by:
- reducing the time and expense of developing new products,
- troubleshooting existing products and processes,
- decreasing the number of prototypes needed,
- gaining invaluable physical insight into their problems.
These benefits have become reality because of the tremendous advances
in CFD in recent years, many pioneered by Fluent. One of the main goals
is to improve productivity by reducing the time required to create the
CFD model and obtain the solution. The direct import of CAD models, extensive
use of unstructured meshes, and automated meshing techniques have greatly
reduced the time required for preprocessing. To further reduce the turnaround
time, more and more users are taking advantage of parallel processing
capabilities with multi-processor computers and networks of workstations.
To extend the capabilities of the software, many users have taken advantage
of user-defined subroutines and functions. Specialty modules are available
to simulate continuous fiber manufacturing, magnetohydro-dynamics (MHD),
and glass batch melting, electrical boosting, and bubbling (see Product
News on page 21).
Above, melt blown die for non-wovens manufacturing: instantaneous flow
field (velocity vectors) reveals large scale eddy structure
Below, temperature differential in a crutcher used for detergent manufacturing
Another way that leading edge physical models are incorporated into
Fluent’s products is through partnerships with technology leaders.
In a partnership with Kinema Research and Software, FLUENT has been linked
with the plasma simulation program PLASMATOR ® to address plasma-enhanced
chemical vapor deposition, dielectric and metal etching, ion implantation,
and reactor cleaning (see Addressing Plasma Processing, Fluent News, Fall
2000). The resulting 3D simulations are fast enough to allow design iterations
in an industrial time frame. The Fine Particle Model, developed by Chimera
Technologies, allows the simulation of aerosol and hydrosol formation,
growth/shrinkage, transport and deposition (see Partnerships
on page 27). The integration of CFD with flowsheet models is being
accomplished by a partnership between Fluent, AspenTech, ALSTOM Power,
Intergraph, and West Virginia University in the Vision21 project funded
by the U.S. Department of Energy (see Vision Above, melt blown die for
non-wovens manufacturing: instantaneous flow field (velocity vectors)
reveals large scale eddy structure Below left, temperature differential
in a crutcher used for detergent manufacturing 21 Update, Fluent News,
Fall 2001). By incorporating a detailed CFD model (such as a stirred tank
reactor) into the flowsheet model of the entire system, engineers can
be certain that fluid flow details are accurately accounted for as the
process is designed and optimized.
The examples in this supplement provide a sample of the different ways
customers have applied Fluent software to solve their real-world problems.
We hope it will offer an appreciation for the diverse world of applications
known as “materials processing.” The future holds many more
challenges in this area, and Fluent is working hard to expand the scope
and capability of CFD to meet these challenges.
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