/>
Star-CCM+

CFD to FEA: Exporting pressure loads from STAR-CCM+ to FEMAP

January 09, 2020

In this brief tutorial walkthrough, we map a Simcenter Femap grid to a solution in STAR-CCM+ with the intent of exporting pressure loads from STAR-CCM+ to Femap.

 

Here’s the process in STAR-CCM+:

File / Import / Import CAE Model

01 CFD to FEA article tutorial

02 CFD to FEA article tutorial

This brings in your Nastran mesh and creates a bunch of stuff that could be used to perform a co-link simulation (FSI) – but we’ll ignore that for now.

This is the trick – right-click on what was imported model node and you can then Map Data.

And this is the magic screen.  You should make up a separate region of all the surfaces that you want to capture pressure data (Boundaries).  The Imported Surfaces is just the “free surfaces” of the mesh and STAR-CCM+ does that for you automatically.

Then you have pressure as a default –

03 CFD to FEA article tutorial

Then you go back to the same node and Export the Mapped Data.  Be careful and don’t forget to select your FieldFunction that you want to export (the second tab):

04 CFD to FEA article tutorial

05 CFD to FEA article tutorial

And your pressure loads are exported and can be imported into FEMAP:

06 CFD to FEA article tutorial

Hopefully this helps users in exporting pressure loads from STAR-CCM+ to FEMAP.

BONUS MATERIAL:

Here’s our virtual wind tunnel with a “blade”:

07 CFD to FEA article tutorial

Pressure mapped to Nastran and then ran in FEMAP:

08 CFD to FEA article tutorial

It’s time to unleash your potential

Reach out to the team at Applied CAx to learn how our solutions can make your company’s goals achievable.