Altair HyperWorks CFD 2022.1 Release Notes

Pre-Processing

New Features

Sketching ribbon
A new ribbon is added to expose tools to generate 2D sketches. The ribbon provides multiple ways to define sketching plane by selecting planes aligned with global coordinate systems. You can also get references of existing geometry by cutting geometry or projecting geometry to a plane. It provides capabilities to create sketches using multiple interactive tools. A dimensioning capability enables you to parametrize dimensions of sketches. One of big use case for CFD is to get cutting lines of rotating geometry and create a non–cylindrical axisymmetric MRF region around them.
Find tool
The Find tool, accessed from Home group pull down, enables you to find specific geometry in the model. Here you can select geometry of interest – parts, solids, surfaces, lines, points and choose relevant find options. The tool provides many options like finding matching parts, surfaces, finding geometry based on topology – free surfaces, baffles, internal surfaces, sliver surfaces. The tool provides options for what to do on find – create a group, isolate them, or select found geometries.
Query tool
A new tool, accessed from Home group pull down, to query information from selected geometry is added. Based on geometry selection, a text box in the tool prints out IDs, co-ordinates, attached geometric entities, number of surface mesh elements or volume mesh elements. It isa useful tool to query information from geometry.
Scattered data input
A new tool to define boundary conditions based on scatted data (x,y,z, scalar value) is added. Scattered data is exposed for both flow and motion boundaries. You can go to the Advance tool for flow boundary definitions or the Advance Spatial tool for motion definition, define variables, and choose scatted data from type. In the table editor, you can input data or load an existing text or csv file.
Hybrid mesh motion
A new option in the Rotational motion tool to define "Hybrid" rotation mesh motion is added. This option allows you to start a few time steps with an MRF and then enable mesh motion after a certain time step/time – without going through the hassle of manually projecting an MRF result to initialize motion simulation. Here you can define an MRF fraction with time/time step. Time step scaling can be populated automatically based on the MRF fraction.
An MRF fraction of 1 mean rotation will be simulated completely by the MRF. An MRF fraction of 0.4 means: 40% MRF and 60% mesh motion. A 0 MRF fraction means rotation will be simulated by sliding mesh motion.

Enhancements

Mesh/geometry selection for acs file
When you import an acs file with both geometry and mesh data, you have the option to select what data type to import to HyperWorks CFD.
New options for model organization
New options are added to allow you to organize geometry better.
Right click options are added to add or move parts, solids, surfaces, lines to a new group.
A right click option is added to move selected surfaces to an existing part.
Part group and solid group color visualization options are added to geometry color visualization tool.
Part level visualization options
A new right-click option is added to change visualization of selected parts. You can select a part and change the visualization to transparent, shaded, or wire frame mode with or without UV lines. You can reset visualization with right-click or changing global visualization options.
New geometry tool from HyperWorks
A new sets of geometry tools from HyperWorks are exposed in this release.
Mid lines – Tool to extract middle line of a solid. Useful to extract middle line of pipes.
Mid surface – Tool to extract mid surface of input solid. Very useful to model any solid part as baffles. It is useful to extract the midsurface of sheet metal stampings, molded plastic parts with ribs, and other parts that have thickness clearly smaller than width and length.
Ruled – Tool to create surfaces/solids by interpolating lines and surfaces either linearly or smoothly.
Drag – Tool to drag surfaces, nodes, or lines along their normal direction, a vector, or another line.
Parameter support for refinement zone
Parameter support is added for refinement zones and mesh motion tools.
Propagate volume mesh controls to surface mesh controls
A new option is added in the volume mesh control to propagate settings to surface mesh controls as well. If this option is on: defined settings in the volume mesh control will propagate to all surfaces of selected solids. If you already defined surface mesh controls for those solids, the smaller size between the surface mesh control and the volume mesh control will be enforced.
Surface tension for Eulerian
A new option is added to define surface tension in Eulerian multiphase field interaction material model and contact angle to no slip wall.
Porosity model update
In Porosity material model, a new option is added to define the effectiveness of the porous material. It enables you to simulate a temperature dependent porous medium.
Accessing Tutorial Model Files
You can now click a link, within a tutorial, to download the required model file(s) for that tutorial.
Important: This download option is only available if you (or any user) are connected to the internet. Users attempting to download a model file will be prompted with further directions on how to access the model file online. A zipped package of the model files can be downloaded from the Altair One Marketplace and extracted to a local machine or directory on your company’s local server.

Post-Processing

New Features

New time history plotting tool
A new plotting tool is added to the solution ribbon to enable display of time history data coming from the AcuSolve database. The plotting tool supports multiple plots per page, multiple pages, and user-defined function plotting. The plots can be static or dynamically updated as the solution progresses. The plotting canvas can also be docked alongside the graphics window to provide a split window view or your modeling session.
Smoothed display of boundary surfaces
Facet normals of boundary surfaces are now computed at import time to enable smoother display of the mesh.
New “Time” annotation in Notes tool
The Notes tool now supports the display of the simulation time for a dataset. For sessions where only a single dataset is loaded, the time value will match the output time exactly. When there are multiple transient datasets loaded that have asynchronous output steps, the time value will reflect the “global time”. When loading steady state simulation results from AcuSolve with multiple time steps of output available on disk, the time step is used in place of the actual time. For example, if the simulation output time is 50.0e10, the time annotation and time value in the animation tool bar will show a value of 50. Full details regarding the time annotation can be found in the documentation.
Time based controls in animation toolbar
The animation toolbar now supports the display of time or frame index as the mechanism for interacting with transient data. When the toolbar is set to display time, you may advance the frames incrementally using the controls or type a target time directly into the input field. If the time doesn’t exist on disk, HyperWorks CFD Post will snap to the frame that has the nearest time value.
Vortex core detection
A new context for identifying vortex cores is added. The vortex cores can be computed on any valid velocity field (instantaneous, time averaged, window averaged, etc.). The output of the vortex core calculation is especially useful for identifying regions in the flow that have recirculation. These regions can then be interrogated further using the other visualization tools that are provided by HyperWorks CFD Post.
Improved colormap and legend control
Expanded options for customization of colormaps and legends. The new legend properties dialog gives you control over the colormap, title text properties, label text properties, and the position of the legend.
New reader options dialog
A new dialog is added into HyperWorks CFD Post that allows you to customize the behavior of the code when importing data. The options are divided into general settings and file format/reader specific settings. The general settings provide control over the default coloring of the model and the default time step to display for transient cases. Reader specific options allow different collections of output to be toggled on and off. Reader specific options are currently only supported for AcuSolve .Log files.
2D spatial plotting
Plotting of spatially sampled values from a results dataset is now supported in HyperWorks CFD Post. An arbitrary number of line plots can be created and displayed on the screen. Lines are defined as rakes of points that are positioned using a convenient, graphical workflow. The plot window contains a number of controls for fine tuning the display of the lines and can be displayed or hidden from the graphics.
New warped surface representation
Slice planes and boundary surface can be warped by a vector or scalar to show “depth” of the visualization field. When a vector quantity is chosen, each node on the surface is displaced in the direction of the vector by the product of its magnitude and the user specified scale factor. When a scalar is chosen, the nodes of the surface are displaced in the surface normal direction by the product of the scalar value and the user chosen scale factor.

Enhancements

Improved performance for transient data sweeping
Sweeping through transient datasets is sped up by as much as a factor of 2 in cases where only a single dataset is present in the session. This performance improvement applies to all data import formats. You should see comparable performance to previous releases when multiple datasets are present.