What You Can Do With SolidWorks Flow Simulation

With the full SolidWorks Flow Simulation product, you have the following advanced functionality:

Heat Transfer Analysis

• Calculate heat flow in the adiabatic walls approximation or in solid bodies.

• Specify different types of heat sources.

• Assign to models a broad range of solid materials that are stored in the engineering database.

• Define your own materials by assigning them values for physical properties such as thermal conductivity, heat capacity, etc.

• Calculate radiation heat. The engineering database contains radiative surfaces such as Blackbody Wall, Whitebody Wall, Grey Body with an arbitrary albedo, and a broad range of surfaces of real materials.

Fluids and Flow Types

• Analyze the flow of up to ten fluids of different types (liquids, gases/steam, real gases, non-Newtonian liquids and compressible liquids). The database contains numerous fluids with predefined properties.

• Analyze a problem with multiple fluids of different types, provided you separate the areas of the different fluids from each other using fluid subdomains.

• Analyze mutual dissolution of fluids. Mixing fluids must be of the same type.

• Define your own fluids.

Initial Settings

Before you start the calculation, Flow Simulation offers additional settings. If you set the initial condition values closer to the anticipated final parameters, calculation performance improves.

• Initial fluid parameters. You can set these parameters globally. For an assembly, you can set them locally for a sub-assembly or individual part.

  • Temperature

  • Pressure

  • Flow velocity

  • Fluid composition

• Initial temperature. Set the initial temperature of a solid.

• Initial mesh parameters. Set additional parameters that control how the analysis resolves the solid/fluid interface, curved surfaces, narrow channels, small solid features, etc. You can apply these settings globally or, for assemblies, to a sub-assembly or an individual part.

Boundary Conditions

You can set these boundary conditions.

Black Box Entities

To reduce analysis time, Flow Simulation includes several pre-built "black boxes." Black boxes have tabulated integral input and output parameters and are included in calculations. Flow Simulation does not resolve them during an analysis.

• Fan. An idealized fan that is fully defined by its fan curve, which means the tabulated dependency of volume flow versus pressure drop. You can use the fan as an inlet, outlet, or internal fan. The database contains fan curves for selected industrial fans. You can also define fan curves yourself.

• Heat Sink. An idealized fan combined with the heat sink. Flow Simulation defines the heat sink by the fan curve and the heat resistance curve.

• Thermoelectric Cooler. An idealized Peltier cooling device defined by the maximum temperature difference it can develop.

Viewing Results

Flow Simulation includes these features to view the results:

You can also obtain the final value of any physical parameter, including flow rate, pressure drop, etc., at a given point, or the maximum, minimum, average, or weighted averaged over a surface or volume area.