Surface heat flux and average pressure

Unknown
edited July 2022 in Community Q&A

Hi guys,

I have been working in a CFD simulation and to post-process the result, I was wondering if I would be able to obtain (or calculate) surface heat flux and average pressure exerted on a particular surface of a 3D geometry WITHOUT using post-processing programs like hyperview or hyperworks CFD post-processing.

Is it possible to define a command (may be in UDF or may be in acuTrace) to obtain those values as an output? If possilbe, how to do it? Do you know a tutorial for the same?

Thanks.

Best Answer

  • acupro
    acupro
    Altair Employee
    edited July 2022 Answer ✓

    Thank you very much for this tutorial. 

    I was wondering if I could do the same with acuTrace or acuTrans inside a UDF/UFP.

    I was going through acuTrans manual:-

    https://2022.help.altair.com/2022/hwcfdsolvers/acusolve/topics/acusolve/post_processing_programs_acutrans.htm?zoom_highlight=heat_flux

    Is it possible to create a UDF or UFP to extract these values from a named surface and write to a file?

    Thanks again.

     

    What is your end goal of having that file?  Do you need if for something else while the job is running?  You can use acuTrans to create the files with the surface integrated information - but that is not automatically run after each time step.

    Within the UDF you do have access to the OSI (integrated surface output) data, You can use the printMessage commands to write to the Log file.  The UDFs are C-code, so perhaps you can open a separate file and write to that file instead - apart from the AcuSolve-specific available functions.

    This would be the UDF function call to get OSI data:

     

     
    udfGetOsiData()
    Return data from an integrated surface output set.
     
    You can get more info in the User-Defined Functions Manual.

Answers

  • acupro
    acupro
    Altair Employee
    edited July 2022

    Typically be default, when you apply a boundary condition to a surface (or set of surfaces) you also get Integrated Output on that set for each time step.  You can use the Plot tool in HWCFD to plot those integrated values on the various surface sets.  You can also use the Convert tool to extract the data.  See the attached screen recording.

    Again - the surface(s) for which you want the integrated values needs to be in a separate boundary set.

  • Unknown
    edited July 2022

    Typically be default, when you apply a boundary condition to a surface (or set of surfaces) you also get Integrated Output on that set for each time step.  You can use the Plot tool in HWCFD to plot those integrated values on the various surface sets.  You can also use the Convert tool to extract the data.  See the attached screen recording.

    Again - the surface(s) for which you want the integrated values needs to be in a separate boundary set.

    Thank you very much for this tutorial. 

    I was wondering if I could do the same with acuTrace or acuTrans inside a UDF/UFP.

    I was going through acuTrans manual:-

    https://2022.help.altair.com/2022/hwcfdsolvers/acusolve/topics/acusolve/post_processing_programs_acutrans.htm?zoom_highlight=heat_flux

    Is it possible to create a UDF or UFP to extract these values from a named surface and write to a file?

    Thanks again.

     

  • acupro
    acupro
    Altair Employee
    edited July 2022 Answer ✓

    Thank you very much for this tutorial. 

    I was wondering if I could do the same with acuTrace or acuTrans inside a UDF/UFP.

    I was going through acuTrans manual:-

    https://2022.help.altair.com/2022/hwcfdsolvers/acusolve/topics/acusolve/post_processing_programs_acutrans.htm?zoom_highlight=heat_flux

    Is it possible to create a UDF or UFP to extract these values from a named surface and write to a file?

    Thanks again.

     

    What is your end goal of having that file?  Do you need if for something else while the job is running?  You can use acuTrans to create the files with the surface integrated information - but that is not automatically run after each time step.

    Within the UDF you do have access to the OSI (integrated surface output) data, You can use the printMessage commands to write to the Log file.  The UDFs are C-code, so perhaps you can open a separate file and write to that file instead - apart from the AcuSolve-specific available functions.

    This would be the UDF function call to get OSI data:

     

     
    udfGetOsiData()
    Return data from an integrated surface output set.
     
    You can get more info in the User-Defined Functions Manual.