Which Program to Use for Modeling Gas Turbine Combustor?

[stan]

hi

i need to model a gas turbine combustor and i was wondering which tool to use?

is CFX or FEMLAB better? i would like the most straight forward step to achieve this task. Does FEMLAB needs programing to obtain the mesh, which program is more userfriendly?

Btw,has anyone heard of the program DYMAIN? Would it be able to model a combustor as well?

If not, any suggestions on which user friendly program to use?
Any answers to my queries would be welcomed.

Regards,
Stan

 

[PerennialII]

is CFX or FEMLAB better? i would like the most straight forward step to achieve this task. Does FEMLAB needs programing to obtain the mesh, which program is more userfriendly?

Femlab is a complete package, it is more customizable than your traditional FE based package making it a bit more cruder to use in general, but it has a good GUI for pre- & post-processing so you aren't "forced" to write any code to get those stages done. I haven't used CFX but a couple of times but my impression of it is that it is a complete professional package with most the properties you'd be needing. I'd say it depends on the complexity of your approach, a relatively simplistic one I'd do with Femlab, tougher ones CFX will probably handle better (and be comparable in easier ones, Femlabs GUI is pretty modern and quick so doing relatively simple models with it is typically really fast).

 

[Astronuc]

Possibly FEMLAB and CFX are about the same.

FEMLAB - http://www.comsol.com/products/femlab/

ANSYS - http://www.ansys.com/products/cfx.asp

I don't know anyone who has done a side-by-side comparison.

I haven't used either, but I had a demonstration of CFX back when it was under AEA Technology, and it was one to the two top CFD packages, the other being STAR-CD.

If possible, try to find papers from the utility or aerospace (AIAA) industry on modeling gas turbine combustors. I believe both packages have a combustion or chemistry module.

I have not heard of DYMAIN. Is the spelling correct? There is dynamic FEA, which certainly incorporates different models than static FEA.

My company uses ABAQUS Explicit.