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SCANIA is a leading manufacturer
of heavy trucks and buses, and industrial and marine engines. The company is the world’s third largest maker of heavy trucks with a gross vehicle weight of more than 16 tons (Class 8). Scania has more than 28,000 employees worldwide, with 300 working in the engine development group in Södertälje, Sweden.
Iso-surface of velocity magnitude colored by static pressure for one component of an EGR system
Pathlines colored by pressure
Velocity vectors in a plane cut (slightly different view)
Over the years, CFD usage in the automotive industry has been a complex and time consuming process, with a wide range of applications including external aerodynamics, underhood, and internal HVAC simulations. Because the number of CFD analysts at any given company is usually small, CFD is often applied late in the design process. If a design engineer can use CFD to weed out problematic designs early on, a lot of time can be saved overall. Magnus Nilsson is a design engineer at Scania who is evaluating FloWizard. His work involves the design of inlet pipes and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) systems for new engines, from the early idea stage to final construction.
Tomas Andersson, Senior CFD Engineer at Fluent Sweden, recently spoke with Magnus Nilsson of Scania Trucks about using FloWizard.
TA: How has FloWizard helped the workflow in your organization?
MN: Ordinarily, when we make modifications, we need to send a job to the CFD engineer to confirm how the fluid flow changes. This can be tedious, especially if it is a fairly simple simulation that I know how to do. With software like FloWizard, with its comprehensive wizard, I can easily and quickly compare different solutions with respect to, for instance, the pressure drop. This allows me to see immediately if the modification is good or bad. If we see that a modification is an improvement early in the design cycle, we can shorten the cycle and focus on more critical spots.
TA: Have you and your colleagues used the collaboration feature yet?
MN: If I run into problems, the process doesn’t have to stand still. With the collaboration feature inside FloWizard it is possible to work with others, either engineers who are working on the same project, or the local CFD experts who can give advice online.
TA: How is the postprocessing?
MN: To have all steps in the CFD process included in one single program is very good. There are no problems setting up the case and during the postprocessing, it is easy to save animations and obtain relevant pictures. When the simulation is done I have the written report in my hand with my own comments. With this report as a base, I can have a discussion with the CFD engineer about the results. We still need the CFD experts to confirm simulations in more detail and to do all of our more complicated simulations. However, the CFD engineers can take my case and continue with it directly in FLUENT if, for example, a transient simulation or multiphase flow is necessary. Thus they avoid the time consuming step of preprocessing.
Another nice feature is that I can use the pictures and animations in the report for presentations as well. With FloWizard as a complement to FLUENT at SCANIA, it is possible to streamline the design cycle by letting CFD simulations be part of the basic data for decision-making earlier in the process.
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