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PHOENICS DevelopmentsWork in progress

• Main activities are:1. Assisting the new user2. Revealing buried treasures3. Meeting the needs of end-users

in special-application sectors4. Building on existing strengths5. Providing new features

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1. Assisting the new user;the Commander, 1

-- The PHOENICS-Commander top page has a 'new-user' button;

-- clicking on it leads to: welcome, a quick start, a slower start, tutorials, and ready-to-run cases.

-- But not enough cases have been selected, ‘polished’ and provided with new-user-suitable words.

-- and tutorials need updates and augmentation.

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1. Assisting the new userThe Commander, 2

• The Commander has multi-language structure.

• Each language has its own dictionary and its own help file.

• BUT only the English and Russian are available.

• Who will provide the other-language equivalents?

• It is quite easy for a native speaker. I shall be glad to explain what is necessary.

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2 Revealing buried treasures1 In-Form

• In-Form is an immensely valuable feature of PHOENICS.

• More documentation and exemplification exist for it than for any other feature.

• No competitor has anything so powerful. (Or so I think. Am I right?)

• BUT it has still not ‘caught on’.• Why not? Advice will be welcome.

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2 Revealing buried treasures2. PARSOL

• This cut-cell technique is recognised by most users as economical of users’ time and effort.

• BUT some are persuaded (by competitors ?) that body-fitting grids are inherently more accurate.

• We need benchmark comparisons.• Has anyone made some which they

could/would contribute?

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2 Revealing buried treasures3. MUSES

• Multiply SharEd Space is a valuable technique, providing multi-phase capability.

• It was introduced into PHOENICS (uniquely, I believe) several years ago; but it became buried.

• It has been used (only) for heat exchangers and blast furnaces .

• Because it employed PLANT statements recovery involved conversion to In-Form.

• Carrying out this conversion has opened the door to NewMuses (discussed below)

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3 Meeting the needs of end users1 Special-purpose programs

• CHAM has only one well-maintained SPP, namely FLAIR,

• [However, CVD (for chemical-vapour- deposition reactors) and ESTER (for aluminium smelters) have had ‘face-lifts’.]

• The overheads in creating and maintaining an SPP are not small. So there will probably be no more.

• Nevertheless most potential users of PHOENICS are interested in only narrow application sectors.

• We therefore need a new strategy.

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3 Meeting the needs of end users2 Special-purpose GATEWAYS

The ‘new strategy’ the GATEWAY concept, namely

1 The PHOENICS package (pre-processors, solver, post-processors documentation) is always the same.

2. For each sector, there is provided a bundle of files which, accessed via PRELUDE, provide all that the end-user needs but no more.

3.The bundle includes:• A store cupboard filled with useful objects-with-

attributes;• A start-up script;• A few examples;• A new-user tutorial.4. We do not plan to de-activate any parts of PHOENICS; so

a Gateway user still has access to all PHOENICS facilities.5. Probably a modest extra charge will be made for the

files.

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3 Meeting the needs of end users2 GATEWAYS (continued)

• GATEWAYS are much easier to construct and maintain than SPPs.

• They are best constructed by partnerships between CHAM and a specialist company or consultant.

• Examples of application sectors which could be served by PHOENICS GATEWAYS include:

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3 Meeting the needs of end users2 GATEWAYS (continued)

• Shell-and-tube and other heat exchangers;• Steam condensers;• Furnaces and incinerators;• City pollution; complete-building studies via transfer objects• Circuit-breakers;• Rocket-exhaust plumes;• Fans, pumps, compressors of various kinds;• Wind farms; • Wave tanks;• Waste-water treatment plant;• and many more.

Would you like to be a ‘gateway partner’? Please let me know.

You will learn more about gateways in the last part of this lecture.

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4. Building on existing strengths1. Multi-phase flow

• CHAM pioneered the CFD simulation of two-phase flow, funded by the nuclear industry in the USA and UK.

• The input file library contains many examples.• Competing CFD codes are weaker than PHOENICS in

this application area; but they will catch up.• The (buried) MUSES technique was our first step

towards multi-phase-flow simulation.• The current In-Formization project has revealed:1 (bad) that its PLANT embodiment was not quite

correctly implemented; and2 (good) when it is correctly implemented it allows many

more new applications, and improvements to pre-existing features (e.g.MOFOR), than had been previously recognized.

* Exploitation of this new recognition is one of the tasks being worked on in Moscow.

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4. Building on existing strengths2. Simultaneous flow & solid stress

• Another unique ‘buried-treasure’ strength of PHOENICS is its SFT capability.

• Its early implementation had deficiencies, now removed.

• However exemplification, and problem set-up assistance via VR-Editor or (more probably PRELUDE) must be supplied if its value is to be recognized by users.

• Do any of you have active projects needing simultaneous solid-stress computation? If so, CHAM will be glad to assist.

• Joint consultancy projects would be the best way.

• This is another of the tasks being worked on in Moscow.

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4. Building on existing strengths3. PARSOL

• PARSOL has a weakness, which its name betrays:

• PARt SOLid reveals that its authors thought of cells as having one part fluid and the other solid.

• Then, thinking solids had no need for the pressure or velocity variables, they constructed unsymmetrical coding.

• Since then, we have recognised the need to handle cut cells in which both parts are fluid;

• Or more generally these which may be divided into three, typically (but not necessarily) two fluid parts and one solid.

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4. Building on existing strengths3. PARSOL (continued)

• The current NewParsol project is therefore directed to enabling PHOENICS to handle doubly-cut (and therefore 3-part) cells.

• During its course, the possibility of using Local Body-Fitted-Coordinate grids was explored, and found to be satisfactory for some cases.

• However, human-resource limitations have caused it to be put ‘on hold’.

• Nevertheless, the diversion allowed time and provided stimulus for the invention of a neater NewParsol strategy than was first conceived.

• This is now being investigated. Its implementation will involve both Moscow and Wimbledon.

• A difficulty to be overcome is the ‘Henry-King-ism’ of some the legacy coding. However a ‘cure for this disease’ is being administered.

• The new strategy allows for the stresses to be computed in the solids, as well as heat fluxes both along and normal to the.interfaces.

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5 Providing new featuresUSP 1 the motive

• The only radically new feature being worked on (mainly in Moscow) is UnStructured Phoenics, known as USP.

• The motive is NOT (as it may be for competitors) to handle curved-surface bodies; for PARSOL handles these satisfactorily.

• The motive is to cut out the waste of time and storage entailed by the un-needed fine-grid regions which PARSOL (in a structured grid) generates far from the bodies.

• I will also cut out waste when only a small part of the domain is physically interesting as in the next picture..

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USP ignores most cells

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5 Providing new featuresUSP 2 the method

• USP is a part of the standard PHOENICS package, which remains able to work in structured or in USP mode.

• USP employs a standard-PHOENICS cartesian or polar grid as its starting point.

• It proceeds by replacing pairs, quartets or octets of cells by single cells, until the required economical grid is arrived at.

• It retains PARSOL’s sub-cells near curved-surface objects.

• USP employs a collocated scheme for the pressure and velocities.

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5 Providing new featuresUSP 2 the method (continued)

• Most of the new coding is being written in Fortran 90.

• New features are tested as they are introduced, where possible by comparison of results with those of structured PHOENICS.

• Activation of USP requires few actions by the user except settings of grid coarsening factors.

• The main work is being performed in Moscow; but testing has begun in Wimbledon.

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5 Providing new featuresUSP 3. Current status

• All the main elements of USP (unstructured storage, addressing scheme, coefficient and residual calculation, conjugate-gradient solver) exist and work satisfactorily)

• Boundary-condition and source specifications via standard Q1s are accepted.

• Tests are proceeding systematically and successfully.

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5 Providing new featuresUSP 4. Main outstanding matters

• Acceptance of In-Form input.• Decisions about grid-file format.• Decisions about automatic grid

generation.• Decisions about visual display of

result.• The date for ‘beta’ release

(hopefully June 2007).

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Phoenics developments

• Next topic: PRELUDE