Using PhoenixFD for flow simulation?

[Art48]

Hi,
I know the purpose of PhoenixFD is to visualize a simulation and not be 100% accurate for industry purposes.
I got a car I want to get a roof rack on and I want to find out if it is better if I place it in the front or in the back, aerodynamics-wise.
I don't own PhoenixFD but I thought maybe the trial can do it? I am not sure, what do you guys say? ANy other suggestions which dont involve spending a lot of money for this little hobby thing? I would need it to be accurate to the point of being able to make a decision on where to mount it but I don't need it to be so accurate as to derive real data from it. I only wanna see where the flow is best

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Check if this can be a starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOLaoHbuVGY There is a link to the scene here in the forums as well. Please check if you can access it.

It's just 300K voxels and can be simulated with the demo version as well.

Cheers!

[Art48]

Hi,
I cannot access the link, it leads me to a list of my own videos.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Woops, sorry - edited the link.

[Art48]

That looks cool indeed, maybe what I need. Downloaded the scene and will have a look into it, thanks!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Good luck!

[TomGore]

Good luck!

Svetlin, two questions:

1. How were you involved in implementing CFD for Phoenix FD some years ago - are you educated in this field or self-taught in CFD domain?
2. Do you have any ideas where to start learning about CFD in general? From the simplest form, just theory about Navier-Stokes stuff and later into more advanced papers? Where would you start (wikipedia is too hard too early). Or is there any basic paper explaining simplest flow ideas from scratch that you've started with in the past?

thanks

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

I'd recommend starting with the works of Stam and this topic on fluids in 'GPU gems': http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...gems_ch38.html

You should get a very good overview over the basics with these and be able to advance to more complex topics. Of course, you should take these with a grain of salt, because obviously today's realism of fluids is still a long way from the actual phenomena in nature, and not all the issues are due to limited memory or processing power.

Cheers,