STAR-CAD Series and STAR-CAD Gateways: Upfront flow and thermal solution integrated in your design process

STAR-CAD Series

A recent CD-adapco survey of Engineering Managers, reiterated that the ability to “drive design from analysis” was a top priority in industry. For many years CAE has added value through in-depth insight into isolated problems, but has struggled to keep pace with the fast moving design process.

CD-adapco has invested heavily in obviating these issues (e.g. CAD-embedding, surface wrapping and polyhedral meshing) to enable its partners to leverage CAE within the design cycle. Key to this, are their CAD-embedded solutions: STAR-CAD Series. Using
STAR-CAD Series, an engineer developing parts in CAD can gain early insight into product behavior, and perform "what-if" simulations to achieve a superior product performance. When more detailed or advanced analysis is required, these models can be passed to the specialist CFD department: preventing duplication of work.

With both designers and CFD specialists utilizing CAE, these enterprise-wide engineering tools enable teams to work together more efficiently. Engineers, CFD analysts, and product development management can collaborate on product designs; improving product performance, creating innovative designs and reducing development time from concept to final design.

The integration of upfront engineering analysis doesn’t replace a company’s current design process, but rather facilitates and ccelerates it with simulation capabilities and communication tools. This upfront approach to simulation provides design and professional engineers
with quick but accurate feedback on product performance while products are being designed.

In conceptual stages, an engineer develops ideas and runs a “firstpass” analysis to evaluate alternative ideas and determine the part size and shape. This is accomplished within the environment of the CAD system. In the following more detailed design stages, an engineer can firm up dimensions and further refine the configuration, v a l i d a t i n g decisions with more detailed flow and thermal analysis. CFD analysts have immediate access to the project data and can further add their own input based on their experience
and knowledge of the company’s products, as well as sign-off the preliminary analysis results.

STAR-CAD Series utilizes CD-adapco’s wealth of CAE knowhow, by automatically using “best practice” settings and defaults. Companies can also utilize their existing problem specific knowledge, by having specialist CFD teams define simulation templates for designers.

STAR-CAD Gateways

STAR-CAD Gateways are an alternative solution environment for STAR-CD and STAR-CCM+. Similar to the STAR-CAD Series they enable STAR-CD and STAR-CCM+ users to set-up and run models entirely within the CAD environment. Users then benefit from having
models associated with parametric CAD models. Two key benefits being: as the design changes in the CAD model, minimal additional work is required, all CFD settings are associated with the CAD parts and assemblies so new results are available at the click of a button; the CFD engineer can utilize the power of parametric CAD, allowing quick analysis of multiple geometries.

Summary

At the core of the STAR-CAD Series and STAR-CAD Gateway products is a powerful and proven set of analysis and simulation, and database software running in the background and transparent to the user. Problem set-up, specific commands, and input/output requirements have been automated and integrated into the familiar CAD environments so users can take advantage of advanced technology without having to learn detailed operations and commands. Associativity with parametric CAD systems allows design engineers to freely modify parts without the need to redefine units, materials or boundary conditions, saving time and improving productivity.

CD-adapco upfront flow and thermal solutions can be used to solve a wide variety of engineering problems across industry.
STAR-CAD Series and STAR-CAD Gateways handle internal and external fluid flows including conjugate heat transfer problems, rotating machines and porous media. Typical applications include (but are not limited to):

• flow equipment (pumps, nozzles, valves, and compressors, ...)
• fans and propellers,
• heat exchangers,
• household devices ( ovens, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, ...)
• ventilation of air in rooms,
• HVAC ducts of automotive climate control systems,
• fans and propellers,
  vehicle aerodynamics and hydrodynamics

For more information on the STAR-CAD Series and STAR-CAD Gateways please contact: jc.ercolanelli@fr.cd-adapco.com

The STAR-CAD Series includes: STAR-CAT5 for CATIA V5, STAR-NX for UGS NX, STAR-Works for SolidWorks STAR-Pro/E for Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire.

The STAR-CAD Gateway includes: STAR-CAT5 Gateway for CATIA V5, STAR-NX Gateway for UGS NX, STAR-Works Gateway for SolidWorks STAR-Pro/E Gateway for Pro/ENGINEER.