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Physics Simulation
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can model a wide range of physics phenomena including fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, heat transfer, electromagnetism, and chemical reactions. Scenarios with multiple time scales can be solved within the same simulation.
Fluid Flow
Many engineering design projects require you to predict the effect of flowing fluids on containing structures or immersed objects. While you can analyse simple scenarios with hand calculations, complex scenarios require you to apply numerical methods for accurate solutions.
Setting Up a Flow Simulation
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to simulate a wide range of fluid flows, such as internal or external, steady or unsteady, and compressible or incompressible flows.

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Physics Simulation
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can model a wide range of physics phenomena including fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, heat transfer, electromagnetism, and chemical reactions. Scenarios with multiple time scales can be solved within the same simulation.
- Defining Physics Workflow
  Simcenter STAR-CCM+ contains a wide range of physics models and methods for the simulation of single- and multi-phase fluid flow, heat transfer, turbulence, solid stress, dynamic fluid body interaction, aeroacoustics, and related phenomena. These physics models are all selected using a physics continuum.
- Setting Up Physics
  This section provides information on how to set up physics models in STAR-CCM+.
- Running Physics Simulations
  This part of the documentation describes preparation and procedures for running a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation.
- Motion
  In general, motion can be defined as the change in position of a body with respect to a certain reference frame.
- Space
  The primary function of the Space models in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is to provide methods for computing and accessing mesh metrics. Examples of mesh metrics include cell volume and centroid, face area and centroid, cell and face indexes, and skewness angle.
- Time
  The primary function of the time models in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is to provide solvers that control the iteration and/or unsteady time-stepping.
- Mesh Motion and Adaption
  Many simulations that involve motion or geometry change require you to move or deform the mesh. Other simulations require localized mesh adaption in order to achieve an accurate solution.
- Materials
  Material models simulate substances, including various mixtures.
- Fluid Flow
  Many engineering design projects require you to predict the effect of flowing fluids on containing structures or immersed objects. While you can analyse simple scenarios with hand calculations, complex scenarios require you to apply numerical methods for accurate solutions.
  - Flow Regimes
    Flow problems can be divided into four general regimes that are based on the Knudsen number.
  - Equation of State
    The equations of state are constitutive relations that describe the relation between the density and the internal energy to the two basic thermodynamic variables pressure and temperature.
  - Pressure
    Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulates various pressure quantities, depending on the model selection.
  - Gravity
    Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can account for the effect of gravitational acceleration on materials in a physics continuum.
  - Fully Developed Flow
    Fully developed flows occur in long tubes or tube banks. For simple flows without heat transfer or transported scalars, all flow variables except pressure can be treated as periodic.
  - Flow Solvers
    Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can simulate internal and external fluid flow across a wide range of flow regimes, and for a variety of fluid types. It solves the conservation equations for mass and momentum for general incompressible and compressible fluid flows.
  - Setting Up a Flow Simulation
    Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to simulate a wide range of fluid flows, such as internal or external, steady or unsteady, and compressible or incompressible flows.
    - Preparing the Geometry
      One of the first steps in preparing a fluid flow simulation is to define the geometry of the flow domain. In Simcenter STAR-CCM+, you can create the geometry of the flow domain in 3D-CAD or import the geomety from a third-party tool.
    - Generating the Mesh
      The construction of the volume mesh has a direct influence on how well Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulates the fluid flow. It influences the rate of convergence and the accuracy of the final solution.
    - Selecting the Physics Models
      Simcenter STAR-CCM+ contains a wide range of physics models and methods for simulating fluid flows.
    - Setting Fluid Material Properties
      The simulated material is responsible for managing the various thermodynamic and transport properties relevant to that material and to the physical processes being modeled in the continuum.
    - Setting Reference Values
      Flow simulations require the specification of a reference pressure and a reference pressure location. Additionally, for buoyant flows, you must specify a gravity vector and a reference altitude.
    - Setting Initial Conditions
      Initial conditions assign values to the dependent variables at the centroids of all mesh cells before the start of the simulation. For a fluid flow simulation, the dependent variables are velocity and pressure.
    - Setting Boundary and Interface Conditions
      Boundary conditions are the set of constraints that define the values assigned to flow quantities around the perimeter of the simulation domain. Types of boundary condition include inflow, outflow, freestream, wall, and symmetry. The symmetry condition is used for reducing the spatial scope of the simulation.
    - Applying Flow Sources and Sinks
      In a flow simulation, you can apply sources and sinks for momentum and mass. Momentum sources are useful for modeling fans or for adding specific volumetric forces. With mass sources, you can add extra mass to the flow domain, such as for modeling mass injection.
    - Preparing for Flow Solution Analysis
      Preparing analysis (post-processing) objects before running the flow simulation allows you to track the simulation progress while it runs. Planning ahead is particularly important for unsteady simulations if you want to store transient solution data.
    - Specifying Flow Solver Parameters
      When running a fluid flow simulation, proper control of the numerical solution process applied to the transport equations is highly important, both for acceptable computational efficiency and to achieve convergence. The recommended solver settings vary with the particular algorithm selected and the circumstances of application.
    - Running the Simulation
      The flow simulation is now set up and ready to run. To control how long the flow simulation runs for, and under what conditions it stops iterating or marching in time, you specify stopping criteria.
    - Analyzing the Flow Solution
      After the run completes, you analyze the solution of the flow simulation.
  - Flow Reference
- Viscous Flow
  Viscous Flow is a finite element approach for use with viscoelastic materials and other highly viscous non-Newtonian fluids, such as liquid plastics and rubber, dough and similar foodstuffs, molten glass, and mud. Viscoelastic materials resemble elastic materials, but also exhibit viscous effects, rebounding slowly from deformations.
- Passive Scalars
  Passive scalars are user-defined variables of arbitrary value, assigned to fluid phases or individual particles. They are passive because they do not affect the physical properties of the simulation. An intuitive way to think of passive scalars is as tracer dye in a fluid, but with numerical values instead of colors, and with no appreciable mass or volume.
- Heat Transfer
  Heat transfer is the study of energy in transit due to a temperature difference in a medium or between media. Heat transfer extends thermodynamic analysis through the study of the modes of energy transfer and through development of relations to calculate energy transfer rates.
- Species
  This chapter provides information about the chemical species models in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. A species model is activated whenever a multi-component liquid or multi-component gas is chosen from the Material model section of the Physics Model Selection dialog.
- Porous Media
  Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to simulate the transport of a fluid or energy (e.g. heat, electrical charge) through porous materials using the concept that the action of the porous media can be represented using appropriate loss (or 'diffusion') coefficients.
- Adjoint
  The adjoint method is an efficient means to predict the influence of many design parameters and physical inputs on some engineering quantity of interest, that is, on the engineering objective of the simulation. In other words, it provides the sensitivity of the objective (output) with respect to the design variables (input).
- Fans and Blowers
  Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides models for axial and radial fans where classical fan laws apply.
- Virtual Disk Model
  The virtual disk model is based upon the principle of representing propellers, turbines, rotors, fans, and so on, as an actuator disk. The actuator disk treatment is practical when you are concerned about the influence of the rotor/propeller behavior on the flow rather than knowing about the detailed interactions between the flow and the blades of the rotating device.
- Turbulence
  Most fluid flows of engineering interest are characterized by irregularly fluctuating flow quantities.
- Transition
  The term transition refers to the phenomenon of laminar to turbulence transition in boundary layers. A transition model in combination with a turbulence model predicts the onset of transition in a turbulent boundary layer.
- Wall Distance
  Wall distance is a parameter that represents the distance from a cell centroid to the nearest wall face with a non-slip boundary condition. Various physical models require this parameter to account for near-wall effects.
- Radiation
  The Radiation Model is the gateway, or entry point to all of the radiation modeling capabilities of Simcenter STAR-CCM+. This section describes Simcenter STAR-CCM+’s radiation modeling.
- Aeroacoustics
  Aeroacoustics investigates the aerodynamic generation of sound.
- Reacting Flow
  Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides a selection of models that you can use to simulate a wide range of reacting flow applications.
- Internal Combustion Engines
  In an internal combustion engine (ICE), for example a gasoline engine, the process of combustion takes place in a cylinder (or cylinders) within the engine. The working fluid is a fuel and oxidizer mixture (usually air), which reacts to form combustion products.
- Multiphase Flow
  Multiphase flow is a term which refers to the flow and interaction of several phases within the same system where distinct interfaces exist between the phases. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ considers flow options where phases coexist as: gas bubbles in liquid, liquid droplets in gas, and/or solid particles in gas or liquid, and/or (large scale) free surface flows.
- Dynamic Fluid Body Interaction
  Dynamic Fluid Body Interaction (DFBI) in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to simulate the motion of a 6-DOF body with the displacement and rotation resulting from the defined mechanical and multiphysics interaction (flow, DEM, solid stress, EMAG).
- Harmonic Balance
  Some unsteady flows have a regularly repeating flow pattern, that is, they are time-periodic. Consider the flow from a fan blade passing across the entrance to a duct. Measurements of the instantaneous flow just within the duct would show a regularly repeating pattern. If the flow disturbances are sufficiently large, and propagate to the end of the duct, measurements of the unsteady flow at any point within the duct show repeating patterns. Such time-periodic patterns can be expressed using Fourier series.
- Solid Stress
  Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to model the response of a solid continuum to applied loads, including mechanical loads and thermal loads that result from changes in the solid temperature.
- Electromagnetism
  Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to model engineering applications involving electromagnetic phenomena. Example applications are electric motors, electric switches, and transformers, which can be modeled based on the classical theory of Electromagnetism.
- Electrochemistry
  Electrochemistry is the study of chemical reactions which occur due to an imposed electrical charge, or a difference in electrical potential at a boundary between a conductor–such as a metal–and an electrolyte. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides models that allow you to simulate batteries, corrosion, etching, and other electrochemical reactions.
- Electric Circuits
  Electrical circuits are conducting loops of interconnected electrical components, such as batteries, power sources, resistors, and inductors.
- Plasma
  Plasma is a state of matter similar to a gas that is composed partially or completely of charged particles such as ions and electrons which are not bound to each other.
- Batteries
  You can simulate batteries in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ using battery cells and battery cycling procedures that are defined either directly in Simcenter STAR-CCM+, or in the external software package Simcenter Battery Design Studio.
- Casting
  Casting simulations are performed using transient multiphase simulations using the VOF model with solidification. Conjugate heat transfer is applied between the solidifying melt and the solid mold.
- Region Sources
  This section provides some guidelines on how to use region sources for some common problems.
- Cell Quality Remediation
  The Cell Quality Remediation model helps you get solutions on a poor-quality mesh. This model identifies poor-quality cells, using a set of predefined criteria, such as Skewness Angle exceeding a certain threshold. Once these cells and their neighbors have been marked, the computed gradients in these cells are modified in such a way as to improve the robustness of the solution.
- Guidelines for Applying Simcenter STAR-CCM+
  This part of the documentation provides guidelines on applying Simcenter STAR-CCM+ models to your applications.
- Common Solvers Reference
  In Simcenter STAR-CCM+, solvers compute the solution during the simulation run.

Setting Up a Flow Simulation

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to simulate a wide range of fluid flows, such as internal or external, steady or unsteady, and compressible or incompressible flows.

The following steps outline the recommended workflow for a fluid flow simulation in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. The steps assume that you are already familiar with general Simcenter STAR-CCM+ tasks, such as creating parts, assigning parts to regions, or creating reports and scenes.

Before you set up the simulation in Simcenter STAR-CCM+, identify the relevant features of the flow problem, such as the properties of the flow or the time scales. Identify a suitable representation of the problem, including the physical domain, the type of analysis (for example, steady or unsteady), any symmetry in the problem, the boundary conditions, and any other assumptions.