Integrated
Analysis Environments for Heat Transfer and Fluid
Flow
“As
technology matures, it disappears.”
-
M. Weiser, Xerox PARC (paraphrased)
One
of our key jobs at C&R Technologies is to make
our thermal/fluid solution technologies disappear
... to
become components of a custom multidisciplinary design
environment.
C&R
Technologies provides best-of-class user-extensible
heat transfer and fluid flow design and analysis capabilities
accessible through both geometric and nongeometric
user interfaces. But we realize that some customers’
needs are best served with their own custom environment
or interface. We are also strong proponents of system-level
trade studies and other high-level design tasks that
require the feedback of many specialized analyses
and considerations: structural, electrical, CFD, aerothermal,
optical, reliability, life cycle cost (LCC) or net
present value (NPV), etc.
Therefore,
not only are our tools highly extensible and customizeable,
and not only are they fully parametric and able to
respond dynamically to model changes, but we also
provide APIs (advanced programmer interfaces) and
other tools for integrating SINDA/FLUINT
and Thermal
Desktop®, RadCAD®,
FloCAD®
solution technologies into a higher-level design evaluation
system. Such capabilities are available for codes
such as Microsoft Excel®, Engineous’
iSIGHT® or Phoenix
Integration’s ModelCenter®, and we welcome
the opportunity to create additional connections.
For
more information about our customizable interface
for Microsoft Excel, please visit our page on the
Excel SINDA/FLUINT Controller.
MATLAB
as an Example
To
illustrate the possibilities, the interchange with
MathWork’s
MATLAB® and Simulink® is briefly described.SINDA/FLUINT
can be started as a subprocess of MATLAB on a PC.
“Registers” and other data values can be
passed back and forth between SINDA/FLUINT and MATLAB,
as commanded from either code. SINDA/FLUINT’s
execution can be suspended and restarted from MATLAB,
which can send signals back to SINDA/FLUINT to perform
operations such as redo a steady-state analysis, advance
a transient time step, perform an optimization, or
everything else that is accessible from within SINDA/FLUINT’s
user logic blocks (which is almost everything).
Thermal
Desktop’s Dynamic Mode can be used to further
expand this system, by calling for new Thermal Desktop
or RadCAD geometric (radiative, thermal contact, FEM,
FDM, etc.) solutions from within SINDA/FLUINT, perhaps
as directed from MATLAB.
Although
most such integrations are proprietary, an example
of one that is documented publicly is NREL’s
ADVISOR used for integrated automobile design.
Relevant
Links: MDO and MDA
Additional
Resources
- Customizable
Multidiscipline Environments for Heat Transfer and
Fluid Flow Modeling, ICES 2004 PDF
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