Hardcore developer brainstorming on fluid modeling
Fluid can be liquids or gases where flow or heat-transfer properties are of interest, particularly when they interact with container wall or other solid materials (pipe, cylinder, fan, etc...) .
Desings that benefit from fluid modelling
- cylinder head
- InTake/DryManifold (and plenum)
- InTake/InterCoolers
- TurboChargers
- Airbox
- ...
Experimenting with real hardware is expensive. Much material, tool and machining (human - time) resources are needed.
There are software tools to model the behaviour with high precision. At least 30% of Ferrari's formula-1 success is from such fluid-modeling tools (the engine, the chassis with spoilers, radiators, and flow around them, brakes).
Off the shelf tools
A respected provider of such tools is [ Fluent].
In the guts of fluid-modelling tools
These tools work with finite-element models. The heat and particle-flow equations are solved for the boundaries with sufficient time-granularity.
Interestingly the basic equations of fluid modeling can be described in 10 pages. A few years ago when I looked into it, I even found compilable code in a book at the library. At that time I found no usable opensource software on the internet.
- basic fluid modelling equations
- making fluid modelling fast
- more advanced formulas
- tricks
- cluster-networking (distributing load between nodes)
- modeling tools to provide input data for the simulations
- visualization tools to help analyze the simulation output
- import / export filters to bridge with CAD programs
Most likely the first 2 items are relatively simple, but the other parts are prohibitive.
Opensource tools
Today there are some interesting stuff up there.
- google: fluid flow model source
- http://www.physics.orst.edu/~rubin/COURSES/ph417/Brian/
- LISA: http://www.lisa-fet.com/index1024.htm Incompressible fluids only, I think.
- Code Aster: http://www.code-aster.org/ French, but appears very powerful. Not much it can't do... http://www.code-aster.org/produit/fonctionnalites.php
Other
- google: avl-boost
- fluid32 flow analyser: http://www.raczynski.com/pn/fluids.htm
- This is really really slow, and modelling is tricky (IMHO)
- cfx products: http://www-waterloo.ansys.com/cfx/products/
- http://lesoft.co.uk/ full engine modeling