Fluent, Inc.

Fluent Inc. is a company based in Lebanon, New Hampshire that develops software for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Fluent was founded in 1988 as a spin-off from Hanover, New Hampshire based Creare, Inc., a research and development firm. On February 16, 2006, Fluent and ANSYS Inc. announced ANSYS acquisition of Fluent, which was completed on May 4th the same year. Fluent's flagship software, FLUENT, holds an approximately 40% market share - making it the most widely used CFD package in the world.^[1]

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CFD Software

FLUENT: A general purpose CFD code that is the primary product of Fluent, Inc. The software code is based on the finite volume method on a collocated grid. FLUENT offers a wide array of physical models that can be applied to a wide array of industries. Some features of FLUENT include:^[2]

• Dynamic and Moving Mesh: The user simply sets up the initial mesh and prescribes the motion, while FLUENT automatically changes the mesh to follow the motion prescribed. This is useful for modeling flow conditions in and around moving objects.
• Turbulence: A large number of turbulence models are used to approximate the effects of turbulence in a wide array of flow regimes.
• Acoustics: The acoustics model lets users perform "on-the-fly" sound calculations.
• Reacting Flows: FLUENT has the ability to model combustion as well as finite rate chemistry and accurate modeling of surface chemistry.
• Heat Transfer, Phase Change, and Radiation: FLUENT contains many options for modeling convection, conduction, and radiation.
• Multiphase: It is possible to model several different fluids in a single domain with FLUENT.
• Post-processing: Users can post-process their data in FLUENT, creating - among other things - contours, pathlines, and vectors to display the data.

POLYFLOW: A finite-element based CFD package for the analysis of polymer processing and glass forming. POLYFLOW has an extensive library of viscoelastic fluid models.

FIDAP: A finite-element based flow modeling tool for applications such as polymer processing, thin film coating, biomedical, semiconductor crystal growth, and metallurgy.

Meshing Software

GAMBIT: A geometric modeling and grid generation tool often shipped with FLUENT. GAMBIT allows users to create their own geometry or import geometry from most CAD packages. It can automatically mesh surfaces and volumes while allowing the user to control the mesh through the use of sizing functions and boundary layer meshing.

TGRID: A mesh generator for generating unstructured mesh from defined surface mesh, also usually shipped with FLUENT. TGRID is very powerful and contains a "wrapper" to help easily mesh large, complex geometries. It can also be used to repair surfaces meshes.

G/Turbo: A meshing tool focused on the turbomachinery industry. It can create unstructured meshes.

Engineering CFD Software

FloWizard: A highly automated flow modeling tool aimed at design engineers. FloWizard allows design engineers to quickly validate their designs earlier in the product development cycle by guiding the user from start to finish.

FLUENT for CATIA V5: An add-on to CATIA PLM process that allows users to validate designs within the CAD package, CATIA.

Application Specific CFD Software

Icepak: CFD code aimed at electronic design.

Airpak: CFD code aimed at the HVAC industry.

MixSim: CFD code aimed at simulating stirred mixing tanks.

References

1. ^ "ANSYS Completes Acquisition of Fluent" http://www.fluent.com/news/pr/pr131.htm
2. ^ "Fluent's Suite of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Software Products." Fluent, Inc. http://www.fluent.com/software/index.htm