Home
Tutorials
Tutorials show you how to use Simcenter STAR-CCM+ for various applications in a step-by-step format with recommendations for setup, initialization and steps of the solution process specific to the application. Macro and simulation files are available for download for a large proportion of cases.
Heat Transfer and Radiation
The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for heat transfer, radiation, and thermal comfort.
Photon Monte Carlo Radiation: Headlamp
Thermal management simulations of headlamp applications allow you to identify temperature hotspots that can cause damage to the headlamp. Modifying the design—for example, including heat shields in the right places—leads to better and more durable designs.
Appendix: Parameters
The Surface Photon Monte Carlo Radiation: Headlamp tutorial uses multiple pre-defined parameters.

Link: copied

Breadcrumb: copied

Tutorials
Tutorials show you how to use Simcenter STAR-CCM+ for various applications in a step-by-step format with recommendations for setup, initialization and steps of the solution process specific to the application. Macro and simulation files are available for download for a large proportion of cases.
- Using Tutorial Macros and Files
  Macros, input files, and final simulation files for a range of tutorials are provided as an optional download package on the Support Center website. These macros and final simulation files are provided as an aid to the written tutorials, so that you can check your final results against the downloaded files, or against a simulation that is built and run using the macros.
- Introduction
  Welcome to the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ introductory tutorial. In this tutorial, you explore the important concepts and workflow. Complete this tutorial before attempting any others.
- Foundation Tutorials
  The foundation tutorials showcase the major features of Simcenter STAR-CCM+ in a series of short tutorials.
- Geometry
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for creating and working with parts and 3D-CAD.
- Mesh
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various STAR-CCM+ features for building CFD meshes.
- Incompressible Flow
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for incompressible fluid flows as well as porosity and solution recording
- Compressible Flow
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for compressible fluid flows as well as harmonic balance.
- Heat Transfer and Radiation
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for heat transfer, radiation, and thermal comfort.
  - Conjugate Heat Transfer: Heated Fin Introduction
    This tutorial incorporates both multi-region conjugate heat transfer and natural convection in a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation.
  - Simulation Operations: Multi-Timescale Conjugate Heat Transfer
    Through simulation operations, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides an automated methodology by which you can include a multiple time-scale workflow in a single simulation.
  - Simulation Operations: Transient-transient Multi-Timescale Conjugate Heat Transfer
    An important analysis for automotive applications is to simulate the thermal behavior of components during cold-start conditions. As the timescales involved in fluctuating fluid behavior often varies significantly from the timescales in solid thermal behavior, it is not efficient to run an implicitly coupled conjugate heat transfer simulation. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides a coupling strategy that permits distinct transient timescales for the solid and fluid components.
  - Multi-Part Solid: Graphics Card Cooling
    This tutorial demonstrates how you can model multiple solid parts in a single continuum using the Multi-Part Solid physics model.
  - Natural Convection: Concentric Cylinders Introduction
    This tutorial demonstrates how to solve a natural convection problem in Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
  - Electronics Cooling Toolset: Natural Convection JEDEC
    Although many electronic devices benefit from cooling fans in removing excess heat, some devices rely on natural convection only. The Electronics Cooling Toolset includes a method for estimating cooling due to natural convection.
  - Electronics Cooling Toolset: Graphics Card Cooling
    When you are positioning fans that cool electronic components, the Electronics Cooling Toolset allows you to assess the impact that they have on removing heat. By comparing multiple designs, you can decide which arrangement gives you the best performance.
  - Dual Stream Heat Exchanger: Car Radiator
    Heat exchangers are devices that efficiently transfer heat from one medium to another. Some prominent examples of heat exchanger applications include car radiators, such as the one used in this tutorial, power plants and air-conditioning.
  - Surface-to-Surface Radiation: Thermal Insulator
    This tutorial incorporates gray thermal radiation in a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation.
  - Multiband Surface-to-Surface Radiation: Solar Collector
    This tutorial uses the simulation created for the Surface-to-Surface Radiation: Thermal Insulator.
  - Photon Monte Carlo Radiation: Headlamp
    Thermal management simulations of headlamp applications allow you to identify temperature hotspots that can cause damage to the headlamp. Modifying the design—for example, including heat shields in the right places—leads to better and more durable designs.
    - Prerequisites
      The instructions in the Photon Monte Carlo Radiation: Headlamp tutorial assume that you are already familiar with certain techniques in Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
    - Loading the Starting File and Generating the Mesh
      For this tutorial, you use a simulation file that contains pre-prepared mesh and regions.
    - Creating the Physics Continua
      This tutorial requires two physics continua: one for the air and one for the solid components.
    - Setting the Initial Temperature
      To improve convergence, you set initial temperature values for the filament and the halogen bulb that represent a good guess of the final temperature field.
    - Assigning Materials to the Solid Components
      The regions for the opaque and transparent components contain multiple solid parts that you match with the defined materials.
    - Specifying Thermal and Radiative Boundary Conditions
      You set thermal and radiative conditions for the regions' boundaries. You specify the radiative conditions by assigning surface materials to the boundaries. At the walls of the opaque and transparent components, you set a convective condition.
    - Setting Up Scenes and Plots
      The starting file for this tutorial provides several pre-defined scenes and plots.
    - Setting Photon Monte Carlo Solver Parameters
      The Surface Photon Monte Carlo (SPMC) model uses a statistical solver to model photon transport.
    - Running the SPMC Simulation
      By default, the simulation stops after 1000 iterations. To judge convergence, you create two additional monitor-based stopping criteria.
    - Analyzing the SPMC Results
      After the simulation is complete, you visualize the results.
    - Refining the Mesh of the Transparent Solids and Housing
      In this part of the tutorial, you extend the simulation to include participating media radiation. As a first step, you refine the mesh of the lens, halogen bulb, and rear housing.
    - Modifying the Physics Continua to Model Volumetric Radiation Exchange
      You modify the physics continua to model volumetric radiation exchange in the transparent solid components and surface radiation exchange in the opaque components.
    - Reassigning the Transparent Components Region
      You associate the physics continuum that you created to model volumetric radiation exchange using the VPMC model with the transparent components region. This association resets the radiative boundary conditions to defaults and clears the materials that are assigned to the transparent solid parts. Therefore, you reassign the radiative boundary conditions and reassociate these parts with their materials.
    - Running the Simulation with Combined SPMC/VPMC
      Adding VPMC modeling to the simulation is computationally more expensive than running the simulation with SPMC modeling alone.
    - Analyzing the Effects of Volumetric Heat Exchange
      After the simulation is complete, you visualize the results. You compare these with the results from the first part of the tutorial, where you exclusively used Surface Photon Monte Carlo to model radiative heat transfer, to assess the effects that absorption has on the solution.
    - Appendix: Parameters
      The Surface Photon Monte Carlo Radiation: Headlamp tutorial uses multiple pre-defined parameters.
  - Thermal Comfort: Car Cabin
    Comfort is one of the main factors that consumers consider when deciding how they travel. Therefore, passenger comfort is one of the key criteria that influence the design process of enclosed spaces such as a car or aircraft cabin.
  - Parts-Based Shells: Exhaust Pipe
    Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides support for thin-walled structures that are best represented by a single-cell layer during simulation. These single-cell layers are known as shells. One of the main advantages of using shell elements is that it reduces the computational time and resources required for simulations.
- Multiphase Flow
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for simulating multiphase fluid flow problems
- Discrete Element Method
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for simulating Discrete Element Method problems
- Motion
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various STAR-CCM+ features for simulating problems with moving geometries and meshes, dynamic fluid body interaction, and rigid body motion:
- Reacting Flow
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for simulating reacting flows such as combustion.
- Solid Stress
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for computing deformation, strain, and stresses in solid regions. They also show how such computations can be coupled to the fluid behavior in an analysis of fluid-structure interaction.
- Aeroacoustics
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for solving aeroacoustic simulations.
- Electromagnetism
  The following tutorials illustrate features for solving problems that involve electromagnetic fields.
- Electrochemistry
  The following tutorial demonstrates chemical reactions induced by an electrical current.
- Battery
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for setting up a battery model:
- Automation
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ automation and macro features.
- Design Exploration
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various features for running design exploration studies in Design Manager.
- Coupling with CAE Codes
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for coupling with CAE codes:
- Analysis Methods
  The tutorials in this set illustrate various Simcenter STAR-CCM+ features for analysing and visualizing simulation data.
- Simcenter STAR-CCM+ In-cylinder
  The tutorials in this set illustrate features for simulating internal combustion engines in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ using the dedicated add-on Simcenter STAR-CCM+ In-cylinder.

Appendix: Parameters

The Surface Photon Monte Carlo Radiation: Headlamp tutorial uses multiple pre-defined parameters.

The following parameters are available when you expand the Automation > Parameters node:

Sampling Factor Ramp > Final Sampling Factor: 0.05
Sampling Factor Ramp > Initial Sampling Factor: 1.0
Sampling Factor Ramp > Sampling Factor Ramp Duration: 50.0
Filament_Temperature: 2000.0 K
Halogen Bulb_Emissivity: 1-${Halogen Bulb_Reflectivity}-${Halogen Bulb_Transmissivity}
Halogen Bulb_Reflectivity: 0.2
Halogen Bulb_Transmissivity: 0.8
Lens_Emissivity: 1-${Lens_Reflectivity}-${Lens_Transmissivity}
Lens_Reflectivity: 0.2
Lens_Transmissivity: 0.8
Reflector_Emissivity: 1-${Reflector_Reflectivity}-${Reflector_Transmissivity}
Reflector_Reflectivity: 0.8
Reflector_Transmissivity: 0.0