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By Tony Hutton, Chairman of the Industrial Advisory Committee, ERCOFTAC
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While CFD software is becoming easier to use, and more and more people are using it throughout the industrial design process, experienced analysts appreciate the need to apply the technology successfully. To do so, the CFD practitioner must be highly skilled and knowledgeable in order to set up and/or select model inputs appropriately, and then to be able to interpret the results reliably against design or assessment requirements. Even in the hands of experts, there can be some level of uncertainty. To overcome this potential stumbling block, CFD must be viewed as a knowledge-based activity. Despite the fact that highly sophisticated CFD analysis codes are widely available, the construction of this all important knowledge base has received little attention until now. The EUfunded collaborative project QNET-CFD has spent four years assembling and collating knowledge and know-how across a range of applications from a wide variety of sources. The outcome is an electronically configured
knowledge base (KB), hierarchically structured around the notions of Application Areas (external aerodynamics, combustion and heat transfer, or built environment, for example), Application Challenges, and Underlying Flow Regimes. An Application Challenge (AC) is a realistic industrial test case that can be used to judge the competency and limitations of CFD for a given Application Area. An Underlying Flow Regime (UFR) is a generic, well studied test case capturing important elements of the key flow physics encountered in one or more ACs. Each AC and UFR example features best practice advice that provides guidance on model set-up decisions and the interpretation of results.
The hydrocyclone is one of the test problems submitted by Fluent Europe
The KB will be launched shortly into the public domain under the stewardship of The European Research Community on Flow, Turbulence and Combustion (ERCOFTAC). However the flavor of its content as well as its look and feel can be explored now at http://eddie.mech.surrey.ac.uk. ERCOFTAC hopes to elicit feedback from the CFD user community in order to gauge potential interest in the KB and, most importantly, to guide how it should be launched so as to ensure that users' needs are best served. For example, should the whole KB be licensed or should it be made available at the Application Area, AC or UFR levels, or should there be a combination of these? A short questionnaire has been placed on the web-site for this purpose. This can be processed easily while browsing the KB and returned to ERCOFTAC by the click of a button. Users are encouraged to log on and send ERCOFTAC their views.
For More Information Visit:
http://eddie.mech.surrey.ac.uk
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