Fluid Dynamics

In today’s world of Electrification and Mobility, understanding how Fluids interact with your product is paramount for performance and reliability. Whether it’s aerodynamics, hydraulics, or electronics cooling, Fluids simulation (also known as Computational Fluid Dynamics, or CFD for short) is the perfect tool to give designers and engineers insight into fluid flow and conjugate heat transfer.

At Fastway Engineering, not only do we offer industry leading Structural Analysis capabilities through our partnership with Ansys, but we also provide a full stack of services including Training and Consulting to support New Product Development and R&D activity for our customers.

Whether used a stand alone application or embedded in the Workbench, Ansys offers several different Fluids software packages, with varying levels of speed, accuracy, and customization.

Ansys’s newest CFD capability fore those who are looking for quick results to determine performance trends, and help guide the design during the early, conceptual phase. Powered by Nvidia's CUDA parallel Core GPU-processing, DISCOVERY LIVE offers an unintimidating GUI, interactive modeling, and near instant results. Coupled with the direct CAD modeling capabilities, internal and external fluid volumes can easily be designed, updated, and optimized while the analysis results are constantly shown live on the screen. For a problem that requires a bit more attention to detail, Ansys Discovery's "Refine Mode" offers the same intuitive User Interface, but with a deeper bench of options, including direct control over the mesh - which is critical for capturing the true physics within the boundary layer.

ANSYS FLUENT is a general purpose CFD solver which handles the widest variety of Turbulence Models, Mach Regimes, and Heat Transfer including Multi-Phase mixing and Chemistry Reactions. The Workbench interface allows easy access to all steps of the Fluid Dynamics Simulation process – Geometry, Meshing, Solving, and Post-Processing, as well as “drag-and-drop” capability which allows easy creation of complex phenomena such as Fluid Structure Interaction and Aero-Acoustics. With constant advancements in high quality meshing and user workflow, powerful CFD capabilities can be put in the hands of those who are still climbing the learning curve.

ANSYS CFX is the second “flagship” CFD solver available from Ansys, specifically designed for use with rotating flow, such as pumps, fans, compressors and gas and hydraulic turbines. Coupled with preprocessing applications like TurboGrid and BladeModeler, BladeGen, and BladeEditer, Ansys CFX is the one-stop-shop for designing, analyzing, and optimizing turbomachinery designs for peak performance and reliability.

CFD software can also be used to analyze processes such as extrusion, thermoforming, blow molding, glass forming, fiber drawing and concrete shaping. In these applications, tooling is particularly expensive, and traditional trial-and-error methods can be cost prohibitive. ANSYS POLYFLOW allows designers to design parts from tools, and reverse engineer tools from parts, drastically reducing production launch costs time to market.

Complex interactions between fluids and discrete particles, has really pushed the limits of traditional CFD tools based on the Finite Volume Method. ANSYS ROCKY, uses a new Discrete Element Method (DEM) which includes flexible fibers, actual non-spherical shapes, as well as breakage models. Rocky is able to solve using multiple GPU’s, so complex physics is solved faster than ever before.

Ice Accretion can be detrimental to aerodynamic performance, and is particularly common on the leading edge of airfoils where it can severely reduce performance. Testing, as always, is expensive, and simulation is challenging due to the transient, dynamic, multiphase nature of the underlying physics. FENSAP-ICE is specifically engineered to handle Ice Accretion and help design and optimize Ice Protection Systems to minimize performance penalties due to in-flight icing.

For climbing up the learning curve, Fastway Engineering has bespoke curriculum and in-house instructors to lead timely, impactful, classroom-based training. Of course, we understand it’s tough to get out of the office, so for those who are looking for self-paced courses we offer a plethora of web-based training through the Ansys Learning Hub. Finally, for the highest level of simulation maturity, we work with our clients to create custom knowledge management programs using our Problem-Based Learning approach.

Sometimes the schedule just doesn’t allow for the weeks and months it takes to deploy, train, and build confidence in trusting your Fluid Analysis. Sometimes, production is stopped, or the engineering team is spinning in circles. For those cases our team of CFD experts can review, scope, and execute analyses in-house in just a matter of days. Since Fastway Engineering started out as a training and services company, we are constantly using these tools in our own projects. As a result, we have been able to reach peak levels of speed and accuracy. From managing complex coupled physics, to leveraging Ansys Cloud for large transient models, Fastway Engineering uses simulation every day to help clients all over.