Workshop 4

2-way FSI for a Thermal Stress

Simulation
14. 5 Release

Solving FSI Applications Using

ANSYS Mechanical and ANSYS CFX
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2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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Problem Overview
Water with a transient sinusoidal inlet
temperature flows through a duct
Water with an inverse inlet
temperature profile through a bent
pipe within the duct
The solid steel that makes up the
annular pipe wall between the duct
flow and pipe flow undergoes thermal
expansion and contraction.
The movement of steel can
potentially affect the fluid flow in the
duct and pipe.

Flow inside pipe

Steel pipe
walls

Duct

This movement will be modeled using

structural and thermal coupling
between CFX and Mechanical.

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What is Solved in CFX

Temp at
duct inlet

Duct Inlet

Pipe Inlet
Duct Outlet
Pipe Outlet

Temp at
pipe inlet

The flow and temperature fields in both the duct

and pipe are solved in CFX.
The temperatures at the two inlets have a
sinusoidal fluctuation with time, oscillating
between 300 K and 500 K (from an initial
temperature of 400K).

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What is Solved in ANSYS Mechanical

The inner and outer surfaces receive
pressure and thermal loads from CFX

Clamped
adiabatic
end

Mechanical solves the temperature field inside the

solid steel, and determines the structural response
due to thermal and force loads received from the duct
and pipe flow.

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Clamped
adiabatic
end

Release 14.5

Workflow Overview
The geometry, meshes and a basic CFX domain and boundary conditions have
already been completed. To complete the workshop you will:

Define the structural and thermal setup in Mechanical

Use command snippets to convert the element type to elements that support
both thermal and structural degrees of freedom

Add supports and FSI interfaces

Add command snippet for thermal initial condition and reference temperature

Complete the fluid and FSI settings in CFX-Pre

Solve the transient FSI simulation

Post-process

2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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Starting Workbench
1.

Open the Workbench project ThermalStress.wbpj and save the to a new

working directory if necessary

The structural geometry and mesh has already been created. A mesh has been
imported into a CFX Component System and a basic setup defined

2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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Structural Model
Now complete the structural FSI setup

1.

Double-click the Setup cell (A5)

2.

Select Units > Metric (m, kg, N, s, V, A)

from the main menu and also set the
Temperature Units to Celsius (For Metric
Systems)

3.

Expand Geometry; select Solid and verify

that the Material Assignment is set to
Structural Steel in the Details view

4.

Select Mesh from the Outline tree and

note that a hexahedral mesh has been
created

2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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Switching the Element Type

When both thermal and structural loads are to be passed from CFX to Mechanical, we
must use coupled field elements in Mechanical, such as SOLID226 or SOLID227. The
element type can be switched via a Commands object inserted into Geometry > Part:

5.

Right-click on Geometry >

Solid and select Insert >
Commands

6.

Enter the following

command:
et,matid,226,11

This command sets the element type to SOLID226

with KEYOPT(1) = 11 (Structural Thermal degrees
of freedom). SOLID226 is a hexahedral element, so
we must generate a hexahedral mesh. SOLID227
should be used with tetrahedral meshes.
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Structural Analysis Settings

7.

Select Analysis Settings under

Transient (A5) and set the following

Number of Steps = 1
Step End Time = 1 s
Auto Time Stepping = Off
Define By = Substeps
Number of Substeps = 1
Time Integration = On

The actual end time and time step size will be

defined in CFX-Pre

8.

Check that Large Deflection = On

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Structural Supports and Loads

9.

Select the Face geometry filter and

select the two annular ends of the
solid

10. Right-click and select Insert >

Displacement then enter 0 for the
X, Y and Z components
A zero displacement condition is used rather
than a fixed support because the elements
have structural and thermal degrees of
freedom. A fixed support sets all degrees of
freedom to zero, so the ends would be fixed
at 0 C if that condition were applied.

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Structural Supports and Loads

11. Right-click in the Viewer and Select All
12. De-select the two annular ends by holding the CTRL key
clicking the faces
13. Right-click and Insert > Fluid Solid Interface on the
remaining 10 faces

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Thermal Conditions
The solid elements defined using the Geometry
command snippets have thermal degrees of
freedom, but there is no place to define thermal
model settings and conditions in a structural
simulation in Workbench. These must be set using
Commands objects.

14. Click on Transient (A5) and set the

Environment Temperature to 26.85 C
(300 K)
This the temperature at which thermal stresses
are zero.

15. Right-click Transient (A5) and Insert >

Commands

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Thermal Conditions
16. Insert the Commands as follows:
mfou,5

The mfou command reduces the frequency of results data written to the rst file to every
5th time step. For this case no further thermal boundary conditions are required. The
annular ends will default to an adiabatic condition. In general other thermal settings
should be specified in this Commands object. An example is given at the end of this
workshop.

This completes the structural setup. When a CFX system is later linked to the Transient
Structural System, an input file (ds.dat) will automatically be written when the
Structural cell is updated.

17. Close Mechanical and save the project

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2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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Linking a CFX System

The next step is to link a CFD Component System to the Transient Structural System:

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1.

On the Project Schematic connect cell A5 to cell B2 to define a 2-way

FSI analysis

2.

Update cell A5 to create the Mechanical input file required by CFX-Pre

3.

Edit the Setup cell (B2) of the CFX system to start CFX-Pre

2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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CFX Analysis Settings

4.

Edit Analysis Type

Note that the External Solver Coupling has

been automatically set to ANSYS Multifield
with the Mechanical Input File ds.dat specified

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5.

Set the Coupling Time Duration to

50 [s] and the Coupling Time Steps to
1 [s]

6.

Set the Analysis Type Option to

Transient and click OK

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CFX Domain Settings

7.

Edit the domain DuctCoil

On the Basic Settings tab note Water has been

set as the Material

8.

Set the Mesh Deformation Option to

Regions of Motion Specified

9.

Expand the Mesh Motion Model

section and set the Mesh Stiffness
Option to Increase Near Boundaries
with a Model Exponent of 1

On the Fluid Models tab, note the Heat Transfer

Option is set to Thermal Energy and the
Turbulence Model to k-Epsilon. On the
Initialization tab zero initial velocity has been set
with a Temperature of 400 K.

10. Click OK to apply the domain settings

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CFX Boundary Conditions

Next you need to update the boundary conditions with the mesh motion and FSI
settings

11. Edit the Duct Inlet boundary condition

Under Boundary Details, a Normal Speed of 0.5 [m/s] has been set with a sinusoidal
temperature profile

12. Leave the Mesh Motion Option as Stationary and click OK to update the
boundary
13. Edit the Duct Outlet boundary condition
14. Note the settings used, leave the Mesh Motion Option as Stationary
and click OK to update this boundary
15. Repeat the previous step for the Coil Inlet and Coil Outlet boundaries

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FSI Interface
16. Add a new boundary condition named FSI
Walls
17. Set the Boundary Type as Wall and the
Location to coilwall and ductcoilwall
18. Under Boundary Details set the Mesh
Motion Option to ANSYS Multifield with the
ANSYS Interface specified as FSIN_1 and
CFX receiving Total Mesh Displacement
from ANSYS and passing back Total Force
19. Set the Heat Transfer Option to
ANSYS Multifield with CFX receiving
Temperature and sending Wall Heat Flow
20. Click OK to complete the boundary
definition
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2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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CFX Solver Controls

21. Edit Solver Control
22. On the Equation Class Settings tab,
select the Mesh Displacement equation
23. Enable the check boxes shown,
increase the Max. Coeff. Loops to 10
and set the Residual Type to MAX
These settings represent best practice for FSI
simulations. Converging the mesh displacement
equations tightly can help prevent mesh folding
in some cases.

24. Under External Coupling set the Under

Relaxation Factor to 1.0
25. Click OK to complete the Solver Control
settings
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CFX Output Controls

26. Edit Output Control
On the Trn Results tab results files have been
requested every 5 timesteps containing the
variables Velocity, Pressure and Temperature

27. On the Monitor tab Enable the Monitor

Coefficient Loop Convergence box
28. Create the following monitor points:

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Name = ForceOnWalls

Option = Expression

Expression = force()@FSI Walls

Name = MaxDisplacement

Option = Expression

Expression =
maxVal(Total Mesh
Displacement)@FSI Walls

2011 ANSYS, Inc.

July 30, 2013

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CFX Output Controls

29. Click OK to complete the Output
Control settings
In the Outline tree note that an Expert Parameters
object is defined. This contains the settings check
isolated regions with the Value set to f (false).
The duct and coil fluid domains are not connected
by an interface in CFX. This is a common setup
error, but in this case it is intended to have
disconnected fluid regions. Setting this expert
parameter disables the solver check that looks for
this situation.

30. Close CFX-Pre and save the project

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Transient FSI Solution

1.

In the Project Schematic edit the

Solution cell (B3) to open the CFX
Solver Manager

2.

When the Solver Manager opens,

enable the Double Precision toggle
on the Define Run panel

This is recommended for all 2-way FSI cases

3.

Switch to the Multifield tab

Check that the Mechanical Input File is

selected and Process ANSYS Input File is
enabled

4.

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Click Start Run

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Transient FSI Solution

5.

Watch the ForceOnWalls monitor point for

the first few time steps

The force converges steadily within each time step.

There is no change in the monitor point direction
from one Coupling Iteration to the next within each
time step. This shows that FSI coupling is weak. In
other words it takes a while for the force to converge
in CFX, with FSI having little effect. Therefore the run
can be optimized by performing more CFX coefficient
loops per Coupling Iteration, so fewer Coupling
Iterations will be needed. Convergence of the
thermal FSI data should also be considered, but well
look at that later.

6.

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Abort this run by clicking Show Progress at

the bottom of the main Workbench
window, then click the icon and select
Abort

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Edit CFX Setup and Transient FSI Solution [1]

7.

Close the CFX Solver Manager and then right-click on cell B3 and select
Clear Generated Data to delete the files from the aborted run

8.

Edit the CFX Setup cell, B2

9.

Edit Solver Control and increase the Max. Coeff. Loops to 6 then click OK

10. Close CFX-Pre and save the project

The next step is to update the solution. Since this will take a several hours you will
open a solved project next. Note that some non-essential files and transient results
files have been removed from this project to reduce the file size.

11. Use File > Restore Archive to open ThermalStressComplete.wbpz and

select a file name in the Save As window
12. Right-click on the CFX Solution cell (B3) and select Display Monitors to
view the convergence history for the solved case
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2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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Edit CFX Setup and Transient FSI Solution [2]

Examine the convergence plots for the fluid
equations (Momentum and Mass, Turbulence), the
interface loads (ANSYS Interface Loads) and the
monitor points (User Points). The fluid equations
should converge to their specified residual target
(RMS 1e-4). The ANSYS Interface Loads are
converged when they fall below zero.

13. On the User Points plot, the scale of the

two values is very different. To see if the
monitor points are converged right-click
on the plot and select Monitor
Properties. You can then plot the
monitor points one at a time.

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2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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MaxDisplacement

ForceOnWalls

Release 14.5

Edit CFX Setup and Transient FSI Solution [3]

To check the interface thermal quantities are converged
you can use one of the default monitor values

14. Right-click on the User Points plot and select

Monitor Properties
15. Enable FLOW > BOUNDARY > FSI Walls > HEnergy Boundary Flow on FSI Walls then click OK
H-Energy Flow
The monitor plot for H-Energy Flow shows the same
behaviour within each time step as was seen earlier for
force. It takes several CFX coefficient loops for the energy
flows to converge, but the the FSI interactions are weak.
Therefore convergence is optimized by performing enough
CFX coefficient loops to converge the force/heat flows in the first coupling iteration.

16. Post-processing can be performed by editing the CFX Results cell (B4).
Detailed instructions are not provided here.

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Command Snippets for Other Thermal Conditions

In this example, commands were used to set the offset temperature. In general
Commands should be used to set thermal boundary conditions on surfaces that are not
part of the fluid-solid interface. An examples of such Commands is:

Offset Temperature
Initial Condition
Specified Convection Coefficient and External Temperature
Specified Temperature Boundary

The ic command sets the initial temperature. If not set the Environment Temperature
set in Mechanical is used.
The sf command can set convection, heat flux and radiation boundary condition. In the
example above a convection coefficient is set using the Named Selection
barrel_external_walls.
The d command sets the degree of freedom, with a Temperature of 80 set on the
Named Selection plunger_inlet in this example.
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Final Notes
In this case, the maximum deformation is small (on the order of 1.8 mm). This has
little effect on the fluid flow, so the problem could be run using 1-way force coupling.
This is done by turning off mesh deformation in the fluid domain and passing forces
without receiving displacements. The thermal transfer should remain as 2-way
coupling.
One could also solve the CHT problem completely within CFX and then pass the
volumetric temperature to a static structural system where stresses would be
calculated. A static structural system would be suitable since the structural inertia is
negligible.

17. Save and close the Workbench project

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2011 ANSYS, Inc.

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