Altair AcuSolve 2020 Release Notes

AcuSolve v2020 brings new features, enhancements to existing features, and improvements in speed as well as convenience.

• Specular transmission for Discrete Ordinate radiation
• Nucleate boiling
• Surface condensation and evaporation
• GPU acceleration

Specular Transmission for Discrete Ordinate Model radiation

As an enhancement to the addition of Discrete Ordinate Modeling for radiation, introduced in v2019, AcuSolve now supports the transmission of radiation through participating media with the addition of the Specular Transmission feature. This feature supports radiation through internal and external interfaces.

Nucleate Boiling

Local changes in heat flux due to boiling can be captured with both single and multi-phase. In single-phase the local heat flux is adjusted to account for the effect of boiling while in multi-phase the onset of boiling prompts the generation of air bubbles at the nucleation site.

Humidity Condensation and Evaporation

Humidity as a field quantity was introduced in v2019. In v2020 you are now able to track and quantify the accumulation of water vapor on a surface due to humidity through condensation and loss through evaporation.

GPU Acceleration

On Linux AcuSolve is now available with enhanced GPU acceleration. The addition of a GPU-supported AcuSolve enhances the already powerful offering of the hwCFDSolvers package which also includes nanoFluidX and ultraFluidX.

Tutorial additions

Nine (9) HyperMesh tutorials have been added for features including acuOptiStruct and thermal FSI, enclosure radiation, solar radiation with thermal shell, Discrete Ordinate (DO) radiation with specular transmission, single-phase nucleate boiling, two-phase nucleate boiling, humidity evaporation and condensation, MotionSolve co-simulation, and HyperStudy optimization.

Eight (8) HyperWorksCFD X tutorials have been added for features including transient conjugate heat transfer, enclosure radiation, solar radiation with thermal shell, Discrete Ordinate (DO) radiation with specular transmission, level set, rigid body dynamics, and MotionSolve co-simulation.

Validation addition

One (1) validation case has been added for DO radiation with specular transmission.

Thermal FSI format expansion

AcuOptiStruct now supports the export of Altair OptiStruct files in standard format in addition to long format.

Additional TIME_AVERAGE_OUTPUT commands

Additional controls have been added to the TIME_AVERAGE_OUTPUT command. You can now specify the start and end of time averaging either by step or by simulation time.

Algebraic Eulerian interface type

The Algebraic Eulerian multiphase model interface type is now available to set through an input command. The default sharp interface setting is most appropriate for bubbly flows while the smooth interface setting is better for cases involving solid particles.

Total pressure now available as a field variable

Total pressure is now available under Derived Quantity Output.

Additional radiation quadratures available with Discrete Ordinate Model radiation

S12, S14, and S16 quadratures have been added to the Discrete Ordinate radiation model.

FAN_COMPONENT now supports P-Q curve input

Fan modeling is greatly simplified as you can now specify performance directly through P-Q curves.

• Specifying time-varying rotational mesh motion through a multiplier function is made much simpler and more straightforward through the addition of the multiplier_function_on_time parameter. You can now construct your multiplier functions by specifying angular velocity directly as a function of time.
• Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) output has been improved to include the minimum, maximum, and standard deviation of all three components for both the structural force and displacement.
• The field specified as backflow for level set applications now is correctly applied only to the region of backflow.
• Restarted simulations where the time increment is controlled by a multiplier function now apply the proper time increment at initiation.
• Restarted simulations involving flexible bodies with non-zero external forces controlled by a multiplier function now apply the proper external force at initiation.
• The combination of isothermal compressibility with a non-constant density material is now correctly caught in AcuPrep.
• An error with incorrect initialization has been corrected when you specify OpenMP as the message passing type.
• The readacusolve executable has been removed from distribution.
• AcuMakeDll now supports MicroSoft Visual Studio 2017 (v15.0).