Altair HyperWorks CFD 2021.1 Release Notes

Modeling

New Features

Advance motion trajectory definition
New setup tool allows you to define custom motion path using 2 reference points with time. Specifically, this is useful in equipment involving arbitrary movement of parts. Motion can be oscillating or a combination of translation and rotation. Here, you can define co-ordinates of 2 reference points in time. You can import a text file for co-ordinates.
Mesh Quality report
New tool to check node-element count, surface mesh, and volume mesh quality statistics. You can select the checks and run. A dialog will show case percentage of failure and worst quality. you can export the mesh quality check as a text document.
Converting results
New tool to convert AcuSolve data in tabular format, or another available format like filedview, ensight, H3D, or CGNS. With this tool you can archive entire simulation run data in a desired format as well as export certain data in text format.

Enhancements

Self-intersection check and fix improvements
A new option added to increase facet refinement for accurate self-intersection detection for high curvature surfaces.
Auto-suppression option for Sliver surface
A new “batch repair” option added for sliver surface removal for CAD and FE geometry.
Meshing workflow improvements
Surface and volume meshing are split into two steps to accommodate manual surface meshing workflows. With update to the Surface tool, you can mesh selected surfaces rather than all surfaces– still considering mesh controls. In future releases, a mesh checks tool will be added to check and fix bad areas for complex models.
Auto-center for cylindrical anisotropic conductivity
Added a new “auto” option for cylindrical anisotropic conductivity center definition. It enables you to assign the same material model to multiple solid bodies. Specifically, this is useful for battery cooling cases where you can select all battery cells and assign one material with anisotropic conductivity. Appropriate materials for each solid body are created at export.
Capability to define external radiation heat flux to thermal shells
In the external radiation heat flux tool, added the capability to select thermal shell faces to assign external radiation heat flux. Useful for cabin thermal simulations.
Advance solution controls
Added advance controls in physics dialog to enable you to define minimum - maximum staggers, linear iterations, and the number of Krylov vectors for flow and temperature equations.
Total power definition in heat source
Added option to set total power in heat source input. This will help for cases where multiple bodies with heat source and total power are known.
Non-spherical particles support for EDEM coupling
Support added to define isometric and non-spherical particles for AcuSolve-EDEM bidirectional coupling. You can define various particle shapes using a table.
Directional selection for surface output
Added capability to enable directional selection on internal surfaces. You are able to define which side of the solid body to extract surface outputs. Support for defining surface output on thermal shell faces is added in existing surface output tool.
Browser updates
Added options to multi-select, delete, rename, copy/paste, and purge in the Setup browser. Enables you to quickly review and modify setup and mesh controls using the browser.

Resolved Issues

  • Added option to rename solid bodies
  • Right-click option to query area of surfaces and volume of solids
  • Fixed model visibility issues on isolate from legend
  • Fixed crashes on edit elements for FE geometry models
  • Mesh file names with problem name to allow you to run multiple simulation in one folder

Post

New Features

Save and restore states
HW-CFD Post now contains the ability to save and restore post-processing sessions through the state file mechanism. A new state sub-menu has been added under the File menu to access this functionality. When saving a state, all properties of the session are saved into a text file. To restore the state, simply re-read the state file into a new session of HW-CFD. This will load the dataset(s) referenced in the state file, recreate all post-processing entities, and apply all properties that were present in the original session. States can also be applied to an existing dataset that is loaded into the session via the “Apply State” right-click option from the Post browser.
Multi-dataset support
HW-CFD Post now supports the loading of multiple datasets into a single session. An arbitrary number of datasets can be loaded into a given session, providing a powerful workflow for simultaneously post-processing results from multiple solvers or different runs of the same solver. Datasets can also be deleted from the active session without the needs to start a new session to clear memory.
Animated display states for slice planes and streamlines
Animated display states are now available for slice planes and streamlines. When animating slice planes, the plane is moved through the dataset in the normal direction. When animating streamlines, the streamlines grow in length, starting from zero at the first frame up to their full length at the final frame. The number of animation frames and speed of the animation are available for fine tuning the animation. Animations may be saved to disk in the .avi format.
Finite slice planes
Slice planes in previous releases of HW-CFD Post were always assumed to be infinite. This limitation is overcome in the 2021.1 release. Slice planes can now be restricted to specific regions in the model by dragging the edges of the slice’s preview plane. The finite planes retain the ability to be positioned at arbitrary orientations and locations.
Crinkle slice display style
A new crinkle slice option has been added to slice plane creation tool. When this option is activated, all faces of the intersected elements are rendered. This visualization technique is useful for interrogating mesh patterns and individual element shape.
Screen capture menu
A screen capture sub-menu has been added to the File menu to facilitate the saving of still images, screen casts, and modeling window animations. Still images can be saved to disk or copied to the clipboard.

Enhancements

Improved import speed for uFX results
A number of performance optimizations make HW-CFD Post significantly faster when reading ultraFluidX results containing many parts. Import times have reduced by a factor of 4 in some cases.
Improved selection highlight performance
Selection highlight has been sped up in the 2021.1 release, making the GUI more responsive for box select and individual pick operations.
Improved selection highlight style
The selection highlight style has been modified such that highlighted edges are rendered with a higher level of transparency in comparison to past releases. This results in less intrusive highlighting, which can interfere with the underlying coloring of the highlighted object when working with fine meshes.
Improved performance of many browser operations
Show/hide, reverse, delete empty groups, and other operations performed via browser selection have been optimized for models with a large number of parts.
Updated workflow help
The workflow help has been updated for each tool in the Post ribbon.
Improved performance of part display
The algorithm used to extract the exterior faces of a part has been sped up, resulting in a much faster display the first time a part’s visibility is toggled on.
Improved gradient calculation performance
The “gradient()” operator from the python calculator has been multi-threaded, resulting in much faster calculation times for quantities such as Q-criterion, lambda2, and vorticity.
Rainbow colormap now available
The rainbow colormap has been added to the list of predefined colormaps.

Resolved Issues

  • Premature termination of streamlines on uFX data has been resolved. Note that this comes at the expense of calculation speed.
  • Numerous crashes associated with spin center setting and surface picking have been resolved.

Known Issues

  • Run tool - The Launch AcuSolve dialog does not check if the existing acuRun path is correct or not. You have to manually update the acuRun path in case of any changes, such as unistalling existing solvers or installing new a HyperWorks CFD solver version