FLUENT® 6.0 is Released, Fluent Inc.'s Flagship CFD Software Offers Enhanced Combustion and Pollutant Modeling Capabilities
December 17, 2001, Lebanon, New Hampshire…Fluent Inc., the world's leading computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software provider, announces the release of FLUENT 6.0. With this release, FLUENT puts forth advances that enable power generation engineers to use flow and combustion modeling to quickly visualize solutions to their toughest engineering challenges, such as NOx prediction, lean premixed combustion, coal devolitization and turbomachinery performance.
Low NOx Burners with Less Risk
High fidelity NOx and radiation models in FLUENT 6.0 provide greater accuracy and customizability for NOx prediction in gas turbine combustors and coal fired utility boilers. In light of stricter pollution control mandates, this greater accuracy reduces risk in designing low NOx burners. A completely new model for partially premixed combustion enables users to model gas turbine combustors accurately without using large finite-rate chemistry models. This reduces turnaround time and computational requirements for modeling real-world, low NOx combustors. "In our activities we often need to simulate partially premixed industrial burners," says Dr. Giorgio Calchetti from the Italian International Agency for New Technology, Energy, and the Environment - a FLUENT 6.0 beta tester. "Until now, we had tried to simulate them using the Magnussen & Hjertager model, but continually ran into problems. With FLUENT 6.0, we were able to study the burner behavior in a more suitable way using the partially premixed combustion model. And, as usual, the code is user friendly and has an exceptional postprocessing functionality for generating graphics," he concludes.
Tools for the Toughest Combustion Problems
High speed, high turbulence, complex geometries - FLUENT 6.0 offers new and better answers for the details that can make or break a CFD analysis. Both the non-premixed and fully pre-mixed combustion models have been enhanced so that these computationally efficient and accurate approaches can now deal with compressible flows. All RANS combustion models are now enabled for Large Eddy Simulation (LES), which makes it possible to model important, time-dependent features of turbulent combustion processes, such as extinction, flashback and flame instability in lean premixed combustors. New coal combustion features include improved representations of coal devolatilization, char combustion, and non-equilibrium conditions increasing the fidelity of these simulations. Also, a new injection definition panel makes it easier to set up simulations of complex, utility-sized pulverized coal furnaces.
Turbomachinery Completes the Picture
"Overall, we felt that this new version of the code will address many issues which are important to turbomachinery design," said beta tester Dr. Peter Flohr of ALSTOM Power Ltd., Switzerland. FLUENT 6.0 has many turbomachinery-specific advances which make it easier than ever for power industry engineers to integrate turbomachinery analysis with their CFD work in combustion, pollutant formation, and flow distribution. Turbomachinery-specific panels let the user easily calculate key integral quantities like torque and efficiency, and examine meridional, pitchwise, and spanwise cuts. A specialized turbomachinery model set-up tool, G/Turbo™, is also now available from Fluent for performing fast, automated turbomachinery model set-up. All turbomachinery analysis using FLUENT benefits from the flexibility and robustness of its unstructured meshing technology.
Parallel Processing
FLUENT's near-linear scaling during parallel processing has been head and shoulders above other general purpose CFD software, and this position is further advanced with the new version, where dynamic load balancing and other advanced features enable users to easily adapt FLUENT to a wide variety of multiprocessor configurations. The Microsoft Windows version of FLUENT has been integrated with MPI/Pro from MPI Software Technology Inc. MPI/Pro® is a commercial implementation of the MPI standard. FLUENT uses MPI to run in parallel on both compute clusters and multiprocessor machines.
Usability Enhancements
FLUENT 6.0 can also read files in the CHEMKIN™ format, so detailed reaction mechanisms can be exported from CHEMKIN directly into FLUENT for greater modeling efficiency and flexibility. FLUENT 6.0 offers a new set of options for postprocessing and visualization, such as automatic generation of animations. Results can be output in VRML format, which enables the user to send three-dimensional images of results across the Web for remote viewing, where the receiver can change views, zoom in/out, and rotate the image.
"The VRML output in FLUENT 6.0 is a welcome new feature that will be important in our work. Additionally, the more advanced integration of visualization services and overall improved functionality make this code a perfect fit for our needs," says Paul Kingston of Hoare Lea Virtual Engineering.
Pricing and Availability
FLUENT 6.0 is available on UNIX, NT, and Linux platforms. It is provided at no additional cost to all current FLUENT users who have chosen to purchase upgrades along with their FLUENT license. FLUENT license fees are determined by the number of processes that a user requires. Annual license fees include unlimited technical support.
About Fluent
Fluent is the world's largest provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and consulting services. Fluent's software is used for simulation, visualization, and prediction of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions. It is a vital part of the computer-aided engineering (CAE) process for companies around the world and in almost every manufacturing industry. Using Fluent's software, product development, design and research engineers build virtual prototypes and simulate the performance of proposed and existing designs, which helps them to optimize, troubleshoot, scale-up, and retrofit. Use of CFD software reduces time-to-market by reducing the need for costly physical testing and prototyping.
Fluent's corporate headquarters are located in Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA. Fluent's European headquarters are located in Sheffield, England, with local offices in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. Fluent's Asia Pacific headquarters are located in Tokyo, Japan. Its CFD software is also available around the world through joint ventures, partnerships, and distributors in Korea, Australia, Brazil, China, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Middle East, and most European countries.
Fluent is a subsidiary of Aavid Thermal Technologies Inc. Additional information on Fluent's products can be obtained on the World Wide Web at www.fluent.com or by e-mailing info@fluent.com. More information on Aavid Thermal Technologies is available at www.aavid.com.
FLUENT® and GAMBIT® are registered trademarks of Fluent Inc.
G/Turbo™ is a trademark of Fluent Inc.
CHEMKIN™ is a trademark owned by Sandia National Laboratories.
MPI/Pro® is a registered trademark of MPI Software Technology.
For more information, contact:
Jennifer Correa
Fluent Inc.
10 Cavendish Court
Lebanon, NH 03766
(603) 643-2600 Ext. 668
jrc@fluent.com