Nantes-based software publisher Nextflow Software, a European leader in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), presents a new solution for exploring and analyzing complex fluid flows for industrial designs, based on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method.
SPH, the particle-based method, the new CFD market standard
After more than 20 years of research by Nextflow Software and others, the SPH method has made its way out of academic laboratories and into the engineering offices of manufacturers. It complements the traditional finite volume method (Finite Volume - FV) with geometric meshing to simulate specific, complex flows.
The SPH method has been widely adopted by automakers and automotive suppliers, notably for lubrication and cooling applications in transmission and powertrain systems (including electric motors), or for fording vehicles.
SPH has also been adopted for other applications in the aeronautical, marine, energy, environmental, industrial process and machinery manufacturing sectors, etc.
The main features of the SPH method are :
- Solving the Navier-Stokes equations by representing fluid flows as particle movements. This representation is particularly well suited to simulating complex solid interfaces (moving bodies, deformations, contacts, etc.) as well as liquids (multi-phases, atomization, coalescence, etc.). Interfaces for which FV methods are often limited by their meshed nature and cannot simulate efficiently;
- An approach that doesn't require no manual meshing and enable engineers to run a simulation within minutes of having their CAD files ready. FV methods, on the other hand, require a manual meshing operation, the duration (from several hours to days) and quality of which are largely dependent on the user.
SPH-flow: different solvers to address all SPH objectives, applications and uses
SPH-flow, Nextflow Software's SPH product offering, includes 2 complementary products to address all engineering needs:
- SPH-flow Explorer is typically used in the exploratory pre-study phase, when rapid simulations are needed to guide and orient initial design choices.
- SPH-flow Designer allows you to obtain reliable and complete simulation results, useful for more advanced phases of design study and analysis.
SPH-flow offers compressible and incompressible formulations in each of the solvers to target any type of flow:
- Formulation incompressible SPH-flow is recommended for highly fragmented flows, where the fluid is atomized into droplets or jets, or for long flows;
- Formulation compressible of SPH-flow is recommended for flows involving complex, brief dynamic physical phenomena, such as shocks and impacts. This formulation is suitable for precise studies of local pressure fields and free surfaces.
SPH-flow offers the best SPH calculation accuracy and speed on the market
SPH-flow Designer uses the most advanced state-of-the-art models in SPH research worldwide, improving the accuracy and order of convergence of the method, even in the case of complex multi-physics phenomena: multi-phase flows, surface tension with wettability, fluid-structure interactions (Fluid-Structure Interactions - FSI), thermal analysis, SPH-LBM co-simulation (Lattice Boltzmann Method - LBM) or SPH-FV...
SPH-flow Explorer is a new product optimized to deliver results as quickly as possible, to minimize simulation time.
SPH-flow is now available for workstations and small servers, as well as for supercomputers and high-performance computing (HPC) clusters.High Performance Computing - HPC) when high computing power is required. A version for graphics co-processors (Graphics Processing Unit - GPU) will be available in early 2021.
SPH-flow can be 5 to 100 times faster than FV solvers on specific applications that are particularly well-suited to the SPH method, enabling simulations to be run in a few hours instead of several days, with often better results than with FV on these applications.
Learn more: www.nextflow-software.com