AutoBlade™ is a parametric 3D-blade modeler dedicated to turbomachinery components. A series of predefined templates is provided to ensure a fast and user-friendly parametrization for many kinds of turbomachines. Besides channel and blades more complex features like fillets, gaps, non-axisymmetric end walls or flank milling constraints can be parametrized. AutoBlade™ also allows to define interdependencies between parameters and user-defined functions, aiming to increase the geometric variability while keeping a low parameter count.

For a fast conversion of a 3D-CAD model into a parametric version an advanced fitting module is implemented. This will automatically adapt the current parametrization to minimize the deviation to the initial CAD geometry.

AutoBlade™ is integrated seamlessly in FINE™/Design3D, but can also be used as a stand-alone geometry creator for usage with other software.

• Parametrization of complex blade and channel geometries
• Blade definition on arbitrary sections
• Non-axisymmetric end-wall contouring
• Optional verification of manufacturability (Ruled Surfaces)
• Interdependencies between parameters
• User-defined functions
• Geometry analysis, e.g. curvature, throat, moments of inertia
• Fitting module for efficient CAD conversion

FINE™/Marine has been validated over many years on a huge number of cases. At Cadence, but also at our customers. As a result, a huge database of experience and best practice was built, which is fully implemented into the C-Wizard.

The C-Wizard will create the whole CFD setup, from domain creation over meshing to preprocessing. Still, it is not a black box approach, all settings can be verified and edited if necessary. Currently, it is available for the following applications:

• Resistance
• Seakeeping
• Planing hulls
• Propellers
• VPP for sailing yachts and foils
• Trim optimisation

Inputs are the geometry and some parameters like ship speeds, drafts and actuator discs. A C-Wizard user can hence focus fully on the engineering aspects of his task. An access via batch and Python can increase the automation even further.

• Fully automated meshing and simulation for typical applications
• Adaptive grid refinement (AGR) as one-click option
• Based on the experience from a vast amount of cases
• Simplification of the entire CFD process
• Minimized user input: engineering data, no numerical details
• No black-box approach: adaption of all parameters is possible at any time

With the variety of fuels comes a variety of options provided by Cadence for combustion simulations. Whether the user is interested in thermal loads or in the distribution and concentration of educts and products – Cadence provides the proper simulation tools. As a result, higher efficiencies can be achieved in conjunction with lower emissions for both premixed and non-premixed combustion.  Aside from the combustion modelling, the user can also consider heat conduction and heat radiation.

The area of application includes all sorts of combustion processes, like firing ovens in the heating industry or the combustion process in stationary gas turbines or aircraft engines.

• Non-premixed combustion (Equilibrium, Flamelet)
• Premixed combustion (Bray-Moss-Libbby Model (BML)
• Partially premixed combustion (FGM, Hybrid Flamelet / BML)
• Reactive multi-phase flows (EDM)
• Modelling of emissions: nitrogen oxide (NOx), soot
• Heat conduction and heat radiation
• Spray combustion

Cadence’s objective is to keep your computation time as short as possible. A key factor to achieve this goal is the CPU-Booster™, which can accelerate your convergence up to a factor of 10 without compromising the accuracy of the solution. Additionally, the CPU-Booster™ is highly optimised for large meshes to provide you a time gain when you need it most.

It is available for FINE™/Turbo and FINE™/Open with Open Labs™ and can be applied to both turbomachinery and external flow configurations.

• Significant convergence acceleration (up to a speed-up factor of 10)
• One-button activation: no additional parameters required
• Enables CFL-numbers up to 1000
• Compatible with all main features of FINE™/Turbo and FINE™/Open with Open Labs™

The significance of aeroelastic instabilities (flutter) or forced response has increased substantially in the last few decades, particularly in the industry of aviation and turbomachinery. A continuous trend towards lightweight and cost-efficient design forces engineers to push the boundaries in the design phase. An inevitable side-effect is that the components exposed to unsteady flows become more susceptible to dynamic loads, leading to vibratory stresses and, in the worst case, to vibratory failure.

Cadence is providing an efficient and reliable tool to consider these critical points already in the early design phase. The method uses the natural frequencies and modal shapes of the structure and computes both the fluid fields and the solid domain deformations within the flow solver. This removes the necessity of interpolation between fluid and solid domains, ultimately achieving a higher accuracy while decreasing computation costs. When coupled with the NLH method an even greater reduction in CPU time is achieved.

• Efficient method for fluid structure interactions
• Proven reliability
• Calculation of natural frequencies and mode shapes in an arbitrary CSM solver
• Weak and strong coupling
• Coupling with MpCCI
• Even better with NLH method

FINE™/Open with OpenLabs™ is Cadence’s environment for multi-physics problems, and allows simulations involving multiple physical processes, currently including:

• Combustion
• Multiphase flows:  cavitation, sprays and dispersed phases
• Radiation
• Conjugate heat transfer
• Porous media
• Mixing and multi-species transport
• Multi-species reaction flows

All these features are included in the FINE™/Open with OpenLabs™ package without additional costs. The possible range of applications covers a wide area:

• Combustion in gas turbines, aero-engines or furnaces
• Cavitation on hydraulic and cryogenic pumps as well as underwater bodies
• Cyclones, vacuum-cleaners, separators, HVAC
• Aerosol sprays, spray atomizers, crop spraying, spray painting
• Sand ingestion in aeroengines
• Pollutant tracking

Coupling with further features, e.g. fluid-structure interactions or acoustics, is available via dedicated modules.

Combustion models

• Non-premixed combustion (equilibrium, flamelet)
• Partially premixed combustion (FGM, Hybrid flamelet/BML)
• Premixed combustion (BML)
• Reactive multispecies framework (EDM)
• Pollutant modeling: Thermal NOx, soot
• Conjugate heat transfer
• Spray combustion

Spray and disperse phase

• Lagrangian particle tracking
• Spray dynamics and inertial behavior
• Primary atomization and secondary break-up models
• Zones of mass concentration, poly-dispersion
• Turbulent dispersion and momentum two-way coupling
• Heating, cooling and evaporating droplets
• Spray combustion

Radiation models

• Surface-to-surface (non-participating media)
• P1: First order spherical harmonics
• Emission model (combustion)
• Finite Volume Method (FVM) for advanced radiation modeling
• Weighted sum of gray gases model for optical properties evaluation

Cavitation models

• Barotropic law model
• Thermo-tables based cavitation for thermo-sensible fluids (e.g. cryogens)

OpenLabs™

• Physical modeling customization
• Definition of user-defined physical models

The NLH method models each variable in a flow field as a decomposition into a time-averaged quantity and an unsteady, yet periodic perturbation. These perturbations are associated typically with the blade passing frequencies of the turbomachinery rows. The unsteady flow field is computed by means of a Fourier decomposition and closely linked with the time-averaged solution (hence non-linear).

The Nonlinear Harmonic method can be used on both single- or multi-stage turbomachinery configurations and requires only one periodic passage per row meshed. This drastically reduces computational costs, often 2 to 3 orders of magnitude compared to classic URANS simulations. A full reconstruction of the unsteady flow field in space and time is of course possible, without any loss of accuracy.

• Available in FINE™/Turbo and FINE™/Open with OpenLabs™
• Only one single passage is required
• The time-averaged flow solution incorporates the effects of the unsteadiness
• Linear combinations of blade passing frequencies can be solved
• Clocking effects can be considered
• Greatly reduces the (entropy) discontinuity at the rotor/stator interface
• Distortion effects at the inlet (e.g. wind turbine at incidence)
• User defined inner perturbations

TabGen/Thermo

TabGen/Thermo is a tool to create thermodynamic tables for complex fluids and mixtures. These enable an exact modeling in our flow solvers, based on equations of state such as the Benedict-Webb-Rubin equations, the Helmholtz-equations or the NIST-REFPROP database. The tables can be used for all phases, as well as in the two-phase region and in the overcritical region.

TabGen/Chemistry

TabGen/Chemistry provides the means to create combustion tables to be used in FINE™/Open with OpenLabs™. TabGen/Chemistry is based on the CHEM1D-solver from TU Eindhoven and delivers combustion tables for an arbitrarily complex reaction. These lay the basis for numerical combustion models like Flamelet-, Hybrid-BML- (Bray-Moss-Libby) und FGM- (Flamelet Generated Manifolds) in FINE™/Open with OpenLabs™.

TabGen/Thermo

• Based on NIST – REFPROP v10.0
• 147 pure fluids and mixtures with up to 20 components
• Variety of equations of state (EOS) for each fluid (Helmholtz energy equations of state, MBWR, extended corresponding states)
• User-friendly graphical interface

TabGen/Chemistry

• Uses TU Eindhoven’s chemistry solver CHEM1D to generate the combustion tables
• Can handle arbitrarily complex reaction mechanisms
• Automatic table generation: the user only needs to specify table type, temperature and composition of fuel and oxidizer streams, as well as the governing pressure
• Pre-integration of combustion tables for turbulent flows using ß-PDF-method.

All real-life products are subject to uncertainties: these can be the operating conditions or, starting even further, the tolerances achieved during manufacturing. Traditionally CFD is purely deterministic, using a specific CAD model and fixed boundary conditions.

Cadence has developed a unique and fully integrated approach to account for these uncertainties. Based on a probabilistic collocation point method, sparse grids (and many more) the outputs of interest, e.g. stage efficiencies, are calculated in a non-deterministic fashion. This means that average values plus variances are predicted (skewness and kurtosis are possible too), and the probability distribution can be calculated, ultimately leading to a far deeper insight into real-life performance and enhanced reliability. Furthermore, the impact of different uncertainties is quantified.

NUMECA’s UQ is available for all flow solvers, and can also be used in our optimizer FINE™/Design3D for a robust design optimization (RDO).

• Intuitive GUI for non-deterministic input parameters
• Qualify the influence of operational, geometrical and manufacturing uncertainties
• Pre-defined or user-defined probability density functions can be used for each uncertainty
• Error bars for turbomachinery performance maps, ship resistances, flight envelopes and many more