ANSYS Fluent Tutorial – Developing Isothermal Flow in a 2D channel.

Problem Definition.
Consider a 2D channel of length 1m and height 0.1m. A fluid with density 1kg/m3 and viscosity
0.00001 Pa-s enters the channel at a uniform speed of 0.025 m/s. This problem is time
independent and needs to simulate the developing of isothermal flow in the channel.

Step 1
Start ANSYS Workbench. It will appear 2 zones such as
1. Toolbox
2. Project Schematic

Then, find the “view” tab, search for “properties” in order to open the Properties of Project
Schematic.

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Step 2
As shown in “toolbox tab”, under Analyses Systems, find “Fluid Flow (Fluent” and drag and
drop it to the “Project Schematic” zone.
Change the name of “tree cells” as Isothermal Flow.

A fluent analysis is consist of 5 cells.

1. Geometry: To draw the problem domain
2. Mesh: To generate the computational mesh
3. Setup: To define the problem physics, boundary conditions, solver settings, etc.
4. Solution: To run the analysis
5. Results: To post-process the solution
Step 3
Click on the “Geometry” cell. In the “Properties” tab “Analysis Type” to 2D.

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Step 4
Double click on the “Geometry” cell to start the Design Modeller. Design Modeller has 3 zones
such as
1. Tree Outline (consist of sketching and modelling)
2. Details view
3. Section planes
4. Graphics

At the lower right corner of the “Graphics”, click on the Z arrow to change to the XY plane
from –Z direction.

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Step 5
In the “Tree outline” the Sketching. Then under Draw select Rectangle. Draw a rectangle by
locating its lower left corner at the origin. Then click “F7” for zoom to fit.

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Step 6
In the “Sketching” select “Dimensions. Select “General” and click on the top horizontal line of
the rectangle and continue to click it on the left vertical line of the rectangle. In the “details
view” change the value H1 to 1 and V1 to 0.1. Then click “F7” for zoom to fit.

Step 7
Then from “concept” menu, select “surfaces from sketches”. Select “sketch 1” under XY plane
then click “Apply” button in the “detail view to set the “base objective”. Then click the
“Generate button” to generate the solid 2d part which can be seen in grey colours. Click on the
“1 part, 1 Body”, click on “surface body” then press “F2” to change the name to “channel.”

Save the project and close it to go back to the Workbench window. It will appear green tick on
“geometry” cell.

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Step 10
Then double click on the “Mesh” cell to start the mesh application. In this section, it has 3
zones such as
1. Outline
2. Details of Model
3. Geometry

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Step 11
Then select “mesh” in the outline zone and press “generate mesh” at the button of the toolbar.
It will show a coarse structured mesh with defaults parameters. Then go to “details of mesh”
search for statistics, you can see the mesh consist of 63 nodes and 40 elements cells.

Step 12
As the mesh generated with default options is too coarse. We can change the generated mesh
to more fine. In the “details of mesh” click on sizing and search for “relevance center”. Change
it to “Fine” and press “update” button in the toolbar. A new mesh generated consist of 552
nodes and 476 elements cells.

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Step 12a
Some additional tips. To refine the mesh further change the “relevance” in defaults to max
value (i.e. 100) and press “update” button” The new mesh consists of 1111 nodes and 1000
elements cells.

Step 12b
To make the mesh even finer, right click on “mesh” and select “refinement”. Select the
rectangular domain and press “update”. The new mesh consists of 4221 nodes and 4000
elements cells

Then click on the “geometry” the outline zone. Click the “channel” then search for “material
in “detail of mesh” change it to the “fluid”.

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Step 13
Then click on the “edge” button of the toolbar in order to be able to select edges of a rectangular
domain. Select left edges, right click and select “create named selection”. Give a name “inlet”
for this selection. Then using the ctrl button of the keyboard to select upper and lower edges.
Click right click on “create named selection” and give a name “walls” for this selection. Do it
similarly for the right edges and give a name as “outlet”. All this named selection will be useful
for later assign for boundary conditions.

Save the project and close it to go back to the Workbench window. It will appear green tick on
“mesh” cell

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Step 14
Then, double-click “Setup” to start Fluent. Click on “double precision” which will have a
significant effect on accuracy but will increase the memory usage and computational cost. Then
click “ok”.

Step 15
Under “setup”, do not change anything in “general tab” due to the case of time-independent
and 2D. Just use the default system. Then click on “check”. You can use “help” button to read
on the technical information of the Fluent.

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Step 16
Then moved to “models” below the “general”. Due to the case is isothermal, so it is a single
phase flow with no heat transfer. Thus, just use the default system suggested by Fluent.

Step 17
Then moved to “material” change the properties of “air” as stated in the problem definition.
Then click “change/create” and close the window to go back to the “setup” window.

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Step 18
Then moved to “cell zone condition”, click on “channel” then click on “edit”. Ensure that the
material name is “air” than clicking “ok.”

Step 19
Then moved to “boundary conditions”. Set the BCs according to the problem definition. All
settings, then click “ok”.
a. Inlet – assign as velocity-inlet

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b. Outlet – assign as pressure-outlet

c. Wall – assigns as walls

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Step 19
Then moved to “reference values” change compute from “inlet” and reference zone “channel”.

Step 20
For the “solution methods” and “solution control”, stick to the default system.

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Step 21
Then moved to “monitors”, select “residuals-print, plot” and click “edit”. Change the value of
residual to 1e-5 for all equations.

Step 22
Then moved to “select monitors” click “create”. Alter the name to “exit-velocity” then change
the report type as “vertex average”, change field variables to “velocity and velocity
magnitude”. Select on options “plot”. Then moved to “new surface” and created a point. Put
the value as (1, 0.05) and change the name as point-1. Then select “create and close”. Finally,
click “ok.”

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Step 23
Then moved to “solution initialization” choose hybrid initialization and click “initialize”. It
will perform automated hybrid initialization.

Step 24
Then moved to “run calculation”, click on “check” and put the value 1000 inside the “number
of iterations”. Then click on the “Calculate” button.

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Step 24a
The calculation will run until it converged. All equations must below the scaled residual RMS
error down to 1e-5, and the exit-velocity monitor must close to the analytical value which
1.5𝑈𝑖𝑛𝑙𝑒𝑡 = (1.5)(0.025) = 0.0375 𝑚/𝑠.
a. Iterations and exit-monitor value

b. Scaled residual

c. Convergence history of velocity-exit

Save the project and close it to go back to the Workbench window. It will appear green tick on
“setup and solution” cell. Then click on “refresh project” to have a green tick on “result.”

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Step 25
Then, double click “Results” to start the CFD-post. Then click on button “contour” on the
toolbar, change the location to “symmetric 1”, variable to “velocity” and range to “local”. To
have better resolution, change “of contour” to 150. Then click on “default legend view” search
for “appearance” and changed text parameters of scientific precision to “fixed”.

Now, you have distinguishes the developing and fully developed regions which indicated red
colour shows high speed while blue colour show “zero” speed. Continued to analyse different
variable such as “pressure”.

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Step 26
To plot Graphs. Click on “location’, select “line” then click ok. Then put the value at point 1
(0.0, 0.05, 0) and point 2 (1.0, 0.05, 0) and click apply. Again used the similar method above
for line 2 for point 1 (1, 0, 0) and point (1, 0.1, 0).

Then click on “Chart” toolbar, search for “data series”, data source location change to “line 1”.
For X-axis used variable “X” while Y-axis used variable “velocity”. Then click apply. Again
used the similar method above for chart 2. This time for X-axis used variable “Y”.

As we can see, in the entrance region the fluid inside the growing boundary layer slows down
due to the no-slip boundary conditions and the fluid inside the inviscid core regions speed up
to satisfy mass conservations.

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As we can see, the result following expected parabolic velocity profile.

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