Editor’s Pick: STAR-CCM+ v3.02 Takes CFD to a New Level

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

A few weeks ago, CD-adapco announced the newest release of STAR-CCM+, Version 3.02. Lots of interesting stuff here, such as an automatic surface repair tool and a DES (detached eddy simulation) turbulence model said to provide unsteady turbulence modeling without the hassles associated with a full LES (large eddy simulation) simulation. But I’m intrigued with its new integrated turbomachinery functionality.

Since STAR-CCM+ came out, CD-adapco has targeted turbomachinery capabilities. With V3.02, STAR-CCM+ now has a dedicated user interface for preparing, simulating, and postprocessing turbomachinery problems. The interface, which is customizable to your workflow, guides you through a step-by-step process to analyze rotating stuff like turbines. This guidance, incidentally, is based on best practices developed by the company during its 25 years developing CFD software and training engineers to use it. (You can sign up to get a copy of CD-adpaco’s document on CFD best practices from a link in today’s write-up.)

Not that this new interface makes turbomachinery analysis kid stuff. You still have to know what you’re doing. You have to choose how to construct your meshes — e.g., arbitrary polyhedral, automatic hexahedra, or V3.02’s new elliptical mesher that produces structured boundary fitted hexahedral meshes.

STAR-Works, which fully integrates CFD within SolidWorks, was the DE Editor’s Pick of the Week a few months ago. I said then that there’s “CFD software, and then there’s CD-adapco’s CFD software.” STAR-CCM+ was in mind when I said that. Not only does it embed within MCAD and PLM environments like CATIA V5, NX, or Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, STAR-CCM+ is designed to exploit a client-server environment to handle huge meshes.

What’s “huge?” The company believes STAR-CCM+  was the first commercial CFD package to mesh and solve a problem with more than one billion cells. A billion cells here, a billion cells there. Pretty soon you’re talking about really meaningful results. Whether you’re talking about meshing around with designs that require a few thousand or a billion plus cells, STAR-CCM+ is all about getting meaningful results really quickly. You’ll find a ton of links to access more information about STAR-CCM+ V3.02 in today’s Pick of the Week write-up.

Thanks, Pal. — Lockwood
Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering Magazine