Creo Flow Analysis - CFD 102 Webcast Replay

Chapter Summaries

• 0:00 – Welcome & Speaker Introductions: Simerics, PTC & CFD 102 Kickoff Moderator Diane opens the CFD 102 webinar and hands off to Rich Moore (Simerics EVP), who introduces Todd Kraft (PTC Simulation PM), Tom Quaglia (PTC Director of Strategic CAD Accounts), and lead application engineer Alex Zhang.
• 2:39 – CFD 101 Recap: Simerics MP, PumpLinX, Orca3D & Onshape Integration Rich recaps the Simerics MP analyst CFD platform, its vertical products PumpLinX (pumps, valves, compressors) and Orca3D (marine CFD), and the ongoing embedding of Simerics MP into Creo Parametric and Onshape.
• 3:57 – Creo Flow Analysis Packages & Digital Thread with Creo Simulate, Vuforia Studio, Windchill Overview of the three Creo Flow Analysis tiers (Base, Plus, Premium) and how the tool ties into the PTC digital thread — including a nozzle FSI hand-off to Creo Simulate and a snowmobile windshield sizing demo through Vuforia Studio and Windchill.
• 8:14 – Physics Module Overview: Flow, Heat, Particle, Species, Moving Mesh, Cavitation, Multi-phase & Dynamics Alex walks through every module across the Base (single-phase flow, conduction/convection heat), Plus (particle injection and erosion, radiation, species/dye tracing, moving and sliding mesh) and Premium tiers (cavitation, multi-phase liquid/gas, multi-component molecular mixing, fluid-driven solid dynamics with spring preload).
• 13:39 – Why Use CFD: Virtual Lab, High-Fidelity Visualization, Vortex Shedding & Dean Vortices Rationale for CFD in Creo Parametric as a virtual lab, showing complex phenomena traditional intuition misses — asymmetric vortex shedding around blunt bodies (relevant to AEC/architectural design) and Dean vortices recirculating through 90-degree pipe elbows.
• 16:55 – Heat Transfer Fundamentals: Conduction, Convection & Radiation Explained Definitions of the three heat transfer modes using the classic stovetop illustration — conduction (solid-to-solid through pot and handle), convection (fluid-to-solid between water and pot), and radiation (electromagnetic waves from burner through space).
• 18:04 – Conduction & Convection: Cut-Cell Body-Fitted Mesher, Automatic Interfaces & Validation Studies Deep dive on the Simerics MP cut-cell mesher that produces clean fluid/solid cells with no mixed cells and auto-detects interfaces, validated against academic benchmarks for natural convection in a concentric annulus and conduction in composite blocks.
• 21:00 – Conduction/Convection Use Cases: Heat Exchangers & EGR Exhaust Gas Recirculation Coolers Real-world Base-package applications showing hundreds of fins and heat pipes solved together in a heat exchanger, plus an EGR cooler exhaust manifold model with strong agreement to experimental test data.
• 22:33 – Radiation Deep Dive: Ray Tracing, Solar Loads & LED Thermal Applications How Creo Flow Analysis handles radiation by casting 256 rays per cell face for accurate reflection and absorption, demonstrated on a solar-loaded office building and highlighted for LED heat-sink designs where LED-to-LED radiative heating is significant; includes an exhaust manifold comparison showing measurable temperature deltas when radiation is enabled.
• 27:06 – Power Inverter Demo: Wizard Workflow, Automatic Fluid Volume Extraction & Materials Database Alex launches the wizard-driven workflow on a power inverter model, extracting the internal fluid volume as an associative Creo Parametric part from inlet/outlet face picks, then selecting components for the simulation domain and assigning fluids (ideal gas air) and Creo/Windchill solid materials including anisotropic and temperature-dependent conductivity.
• 33:32 – Boundary Conditions, Heat Sources, Fan Modeling & Cartesian Cut-Cell Mesh Generation Setting a pressure inlet at one atmosphere, a static-value outlet (with fan curve and full 3D blade options), 5 W and 1 W chip heat sources, choosing steady-state vs. transient, and generating the automatic Cartesian cut-cell body-fitted mesh.
• 38:39 – Post-Processing in Real Time: Streamlines, Section Views, Isosurfaces, Monitor Points & Recirculation Detection Integrated pre/post-processing shown live — surface temperature contours, 20-to-100 streamline "rope view" painted by any variable, 2D section views revealing recirculation via Z-velocity, isosurfaces above a temperature threshold, and virtual monitor points acting as pressure taps and temperature probes.
• 44:45 – Design Iteration: Update Project Workflow, Heat Sink Wind-Tunnel Study & Sharp vs Rounded Edge Comparison Moving the transformer in the model tree and running Update Project to remesh while preserving settings, followed by an isolated heat-sink wind-tunnel study that compares sharp corners (which trip the flow and cause recirculation) against rounded fins that keep air attached for better forced-convection cooling.
• 53:43 – Getting Started, Free How-To Video Series & Q&A on Custom Materials, Priming & Acoustics Rich outlines next steps — CFD 101/102 demos, workshops, online CFD 102 training, and a free library of ~10 short (2–4 minute) how-to videos on wizard use, fluid volume extraction, post-processing, resistance modeling, and the expression editor — followed by audience Q&A covering custom anisotropic materials, multi-phase prime timing, curved-surface domain selection, and pressure-ripple acoustic output.