CADFamily.com: Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer in a Mixing Tee Part A

Introductory tutorial for FLUENT

– starting from existing mesh (generated in earlier tutorial)

– model set-up, solution and post-processing

Mixing of cold and hot water in a T-piece

– how well do the fluids mix?

– what are the pressure drops?

Start in Workbench

If starting from a ready-made mesh file (*.meshdat),
start Workbench and import the file (see screenshot below)

– and save the project

Alternatively, start in the Workbench project that generated the mesh

Start a FLUENT case

Drag a FLUENT analysis into the project

Drag the existing mesh into the FLUENT analysis

– then Update the mesh (via Right-click) to convert the mesh format

Double-click on Setup to launch FLUENT

– click OK on the FLUENT Launcher screen

FLUENT interface

Mesh scale and check

In the ‘General’ task page, press ‘Scale’

– select ‘Mesh Was Created In’ to be ‘in’ (inches)

– press the ‘Scale’ button (once only!) and ‘Close’

Press ‘Check’ and ‘Report quality’

– review the text output

The mesh check ensures that each cell is in a correct format, connected to other cells as expected. It is recommended to check every mesh immediately after reading it. Failure of any check indicates a badly-formed or corrupted mesh, which will need repairs.

Mesh quality is very important to getting a converged, accurate solution. The User Guide suggests that maximum cell squish and skewness should be below 0.95, which the mesh here obeys. The maximum aspect ratio is 34, which is high, but acceptable in inflation layers.If the mesh quality is unacceptable, it is best to remesh the problem before proceeding. There are other possible remedies in FLUENT, such as conversion to polyhedral cells.