Specifying Input and Output Files

To account for the effect of the elastic blade deformations on the fluid, specify the external file that contains the beam displacement data. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ uses the imported deformations as an input for the mesh morpher.

The motion file contains the displacement information at control points along the span of a blade for a range of azimuth angles.


In the motion file, the control points locations are specified via the blade quarter chord coordinates: xqc, yqc, and zqc represent the the control point x, y, z coordinates respectively.

For each azimuth angle sampled, the motion file describes three translational and three rotational deformations.

To import the motion file:
  1. Select the External Links > [Link 1] > Values > Input File node and set Directory to the file containing the blade motion data.
Many RBA related software such as Helios, DYMORE, and RCAS use Euler angles to describe rotational deformation. You can select the Euler angle convention Simcenter STAR-CCM+ uses to convert the Euler angles of the motion file to rotation vectors. For more information, see Euler Angle Convention.

To set the Euler angle rotation convention:

  1. Select the Euler Angle Convention node and set Option to the extrinsic rotation convention you require.
    For multi-body dynamics software, the typical Euler Angle Convention is Z-Y-X intrinsic . In Simcenter STAR-CCM+, the covention is extrinsic, therefore X-Y-Z is the equivalent option.
You can instruct Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to export the computed boundary fields (pressure and wall shear stress) and mapped forces and moments.
  1. To specify the location of the output file, select the [Link 1] > Values > Output File node and set the following properties:
    Property Setting
    Directory Select (Custom Editor) and navigate to a folder to store the output file.
    Base Filename Enter the name of the file, without path or file extension.
    File Extension Enter the file extension of the output file (for example .txt or .out).
To specify the frequency of the data export:
  1. Select the Values > Data Sampling node and set the following properties:
    Properties Setting
    Start Sampling The first azimuth angle at which Simcenter STAR-CCM+ starts exporting the internal boundary data.
    Sampling Period The range of azimuth angles over which Simcenter STAR-CCM+ exports boundary data.
    Sampling Frequency The interval between each export event.