Industrial applications of computational fluid dynamics

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has increased in usage within many areas of industry. In a large number of cases CFD is seen as an extension of CAD or FEM modelling and a long term vision is the integration of CFD with CAD and FEM structural analysis. Because of this it is now commonplace to import CAD based solid models into CFD packages for the use of studies. This is in principle a very practical approach as it saves model generation time. However, with such model generation there are many concerns such as the correct mesh density at the correct locations and the representation of curvature. The CAD model may appear smooth and be constructed by polynomials, but the resulting mesh may not be as smooth particularly if a Cartesian mesh or a mesh with lower order polynomials are used by the CFD solver. Alternative meshing strategies such as non-structured and structured meshes are also shown and results are discussed with reference to the integration of CAD with CFD. Another important issue for the industrial application of CFD is turbulence modelling. A comparison in terms of results and computing time between Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) modelling and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is also given and finally it is suggested that meshing may be best taken care of by using solution adaptive meshes both for the prediction of main flow features as well as turbulence modelling.