P O LY F L OW 3 .
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POLYFLOW is the unchallenged CFD solver for complex non-Newtonian rheologies
including viscoelastic flow. The direct coupled solver using the Finite Element
technique ensures a convergence to address the complexities of flows related to
polymer processing and glass forming. Advanced techniques to deal with deforming
mesh, complex motion of solid parts (screws) and detection of contact between
free surface and molds are available to accurately simulate the many different
processes involved in these markets.
General Modeling Capabilities
2-D planar, 2.5-D planar (includes 3rd velocity component), 2-D axisymmetric, 2-D axisymmetric
with swirl, 3-D flows, 3D shell element, 2-D membrane (film casting)
Isothermal & non-isothermal
Steady-state, transient analysis or evolution analysis (continuation technique)
Generalized-Newtonian flow, including yield stress fluid
Multi-modes differential viscoelastic flow (2D and 3D, steady-state or transient, isothermal &
non-isothermal)
Multi-modes integral viscoelastic flow (2D and 3D shell, steady-state (2D) or transient (3D
shell), isothermal & non-isothermal)
Heat transfer including natural conduction, forced or mixed convection, conjugate (solid/fluid)
heat transfer, radiation, thermal conduction in moving solids, electrical heating
Free surfaces modeling using deforming mesh
Inverse problem for extrusion (die lip design)
Internal moving boundaries (interface)
Static and dynamic contact points
Porous media (Darcy law)
Chemical species mixing and reaction
Volumetric sources of heat, mass, viscous heating, electrical potential, Joule effect, bubbling
Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI)
Contact detection
Mesh superposition technique (overlapping mesh method)
Lagrangian trajectory calculation including statistical analysis
Conversion of system of units
Windows-style organizer:
Online access to web services
Files chronology tracking system
User-Defined Templates
Interface to VisualDoc (Third party Optimization software)
Expert system giving indications about:
Diagnostic for non-convergence and possible remedies
Mass and energy conservation
Adding missing iterations if necessary
Rate of convergence
Immediate stop of the run if divergence occurs
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Current memory requirement
Recommendation of techniques to reduce the CPU time for further similar simulations
Recommendation of necessary modifications of the case set-up to ease convergence
Mesh Capabilities
Quadrilateral, triangular, hexahedral (brick), tetrahedral, prism (wedge), pyramid, mixed element meshes (hybrid
meshes), triangular 3D shell element, quadrilateral 3D shell element
P Mesh (Group of 0-D, 1-D, 2-D or 3-D topological entities)
Non-conformal (non-matching) mesh interfaces allowed
Interpolation including constant, linear, linear discontinuous, quadratic, mini element, 2 X 2, 4 X 4
Import of meshes from GAMBIT, GEOMESH, FIGEN, POLYMESH, POLYM3D, I-DEAS, PATRAN
Dynamic, solution-based adaption, including:
Conformal adaption on triangular and tetrahedral meshes
Hanging node adaption and mesh embedding for all element types
Adaptive criteria based on:
Mold curvature
Free surface curvature
Distance to mold
Local variation of quantity
Local mesh deformation
Maximum size specified in user-defined box
Automatic interpolation of solution after mesh refinement
Mesh manipulation tools (scaling, translation, rotation, merging)
Remeshing techniques (deforming mesh) including:
Efficient 2D remeshing technique (SPINES)
Robust 2D remeshing technique (OPTIMESH, ELASTIC, LAGRANGIAN, Thompson)
Efficient 3D remeshing technique (OPTIMESH, STREAMWISE)
Full 3D method (Thompson, elasticity based, LAGRANGIAN)
3D shell Lagrangian remeshing method
Combination of meshes from different sources into a single file (POLYFUSE)
Online mesh information box
Numerical Method
Finite-element method based on fully unstructured meshes
Direct solver (Newton-Raphson)
Fully coupled solver
Option to decouple temperature and/or coordinates
Multifrontal solver
Dynamic memory allocation
Single- and double-precision calculation
Newton-Raphson and Picard iteration scheme for viscosity
EVSS (Elastic Viscous Split Stress) & DEVSS formulations
Upwinding (SU), 4x4 SU
Time integration:
Implicit Euler
Implicit Galerkin
Crank-Nicolson
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Rheological Modeling
Generalized Newtonian laws, including:
Newtonian (Constant) Herschell-Bulkley
Bird-Carreau Log-Log
Cross Modified Bingham
Power law Modified Herschel-Bulkley
Carreau - Yasuda Modified Cross law
Bingham
Multi-mode differential viscoelastic models:
Maxwell Giesekus
Oldroyd-B FENE P
White-Metzer Pom-Pom
Phan Thien-Tanner
Multi-mode integral viscoelastic models (2-D and 3D shell):
Lodge - Maxwell
Doi - Edwards
KBKZ with the Wagner and Papanastasiou-Scriven-Macosko Damping function (Reversible or irreversible)
Temperature dependence:
No dependence Mixed dependence (polynomial expression)
Arrhenius approximate (first order) Fulcher
Arrhenius WLF
Arrhenius approximate shear stress (vertical / horizontal shift) WLF shear stress (vertical / horizontal shift)
Arrhenius shear stress
Additional dependence via UDF:
Residence time (polymer ageing) Pressure
Coordinates Temperature
Velocities Species
Strain rate User-defined quantities
Invariants of rate of deformation tensors
Automatic fitting tool for viscometric and rheometric curves
Shear rate vs. shear viscosity
Loss and storage moduli vs. frequency
First and second normal difference vs. frequency
Elongational viscosity (constant elongation rate) vs. time
Stress vs. strain (constant elongation speed)
Boundary Conditions
Inlet velocity in terms of Cartesian or cylindrical-polar components, magnitude and direction, magnitude of
normal-tangential components, or user-specified local coordinate components
Inlet velocity profile calculated as a preprocessor considering the volumetric flow rate, the slip coefficient and the
rheological behavior
Exit static pressure
Outflow, with specified flow rate weighting
Outflow (Vs = 0 & Fn = Cst)
Take-up force
Take-up velocity
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Wall boundaries, with specification of:
Tangential wall velocity using Cartesian component form, rotational speed or local axis
Shear stress, including slip conditions
Thermal boundary conditions using heat-flux, temperature or external convection, radiation (emissivity),
mixed conditions or user-specified temperature profile
Rosseland correction
Moving boundaries (free surface and interface), with specification of:
Specified normal force
Specified normal velocity
Air drag force
Slipping along the interface between two fluids
Surface / interface tension
Symmetry, rotationally periodic, and translationally periodic boundaries
Axis boundary conditions
Specified normal and/or tangential force in combination with normal and tangential velocity
Specified normal and/or tangential force in combination with normal and tangential displacement (FSI)
Vanishing velocity along the solid (FSI)
Partial slip along the solid (FSI)
Imposed nodal displacement (FSI)
Thermal interface between flowing and solid materials
Interface between Navier-Stokes and Darcy law
Partial slip for laminar flow:
Navier’s law
Coulomb’s friction (using UDF)
Threshold law
Asymptotic law
Arrhenius dependence with request to the temperature
Partial slip (Navier’s law) along moving parts (using the Mesh Superposition Technique)
Contact detection:
2D mechanical contact
3D mechanical contact
Heat transfer with the mold
Slip behavior along the contact wall (Navier law)
FSI: Stress calculation in the mold induced by parison contact
Periodic conditions
Transient conditions
User-specified profile or map of boundary condition under CSV format
User-specified profile or map of initial condition under CSV format
Optimization of the initial thickness map for blow molding applications
Material Properties
Constant or variable fluid properties including temperature and composition dependence (data pair or piecewise
polynomial input) including thermal conductivity, specific heat, density
Constant or variable solid properties including temperature and composition
dependence (data pair or piecewise polynomial input) including thermal
conductivity, specific heat, density
Use of database containing material properties for standard fluids and solids
(user-modifiable)
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Temperature-dependent heat capacity and thermal conductivity in solid regions
User-defined property inputs
Automatic fitting tool for material properties
Gravity
Inertia term
Viscous heating
Heat source
Temperature variation of the density (Boussinesq approximation)
Surface tension
Young Modulus
Poisson coefficient
Linear dilation coefficient
Interface to CAMPUSTM data base
Crystallization models
Doufas-McHugh
Nakamura (via UDF)
Chemical Reaction & Combustion Modeling
Finite rate chemistry for N reactions with backward reactions, using:
Arrhenius
User-defined function
User-defined access to reaction source/sink terms
Physical foaming model (PE)
Curing model
User-Defined Functions
Definition of custom physical properties
Customized boundary conditions and initial conditions
Creation of custom postprocessing variables
Parallel Processing
Parallel processing on shared memory systems for SGI, Compaq α, Intel, HP-UX
Domain decomposition method, with grid partitioning tools using METIS
Interface, Graphics, Postprocessing, and Reporting
Grid checking (validity, quality, size), merging, separating, and reordering
Summary reports of solver and physical model settings
Flexible units specification (SI units, British units, custom/mixed units)
Reporting and monitoring of fluxes of mass, heat, chemical species
Reporting and monitoring of forces and torques using the Mesh Superposition Technique
Transformation of data via pre-defined functions
Computation and reporting of surface integrals and averages
Computation and reporting of volume integrals and averages
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Calculator utility for user-defined field functions
Calculation of gradients (vector and scalar) and derived quantities
Histograms of geometric and solution data
Quantitative XY-plotting of data
Graphical probing of data
Statistical tool (POLYSTAT) to quantify mixing from a large number of trajectories:
Mean and standard deviation Correlation between variables
Probability function Distributive mixing
Density of probability function Carbon Black Disagglomeration model
Histograms See also exported quantities
Percentiles
Data Export
Export of solution data to:
FIELDVIEW FIPOST
I-DEAS FLPOST
PATRAN EnSight (via a FIDAP Neutral file)
CFView
Exported Quantities
Velocity
Pressure
Temperature
Streamlines
Stress
Stress eigenvalues
Strain
Viscosity
Local shear rate (color contours and statistical analysis)
Residence time (color contours and statistical analysis)
Die balancing evaluation
Flow rate across user-specified boundaries
Thickness (for shell element)
Permeability (for shell element)
Weight and volumes of the flashes (blow molding & thermoforming)
Inner volume of the container (blow molding & thermoforming)
Weight of the container (blow molding & thermoforming)
Area stretch ratio
Map of contact time
Mixing index (color contours and statistical analysis)
Total shear (statistical analysis)
Stretching (statistical analysis)
Instantaneous efficiency of stretching (statistical analysis)
Time average efficiency of stretching (statistical analysis)
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Segregation scale (statistical analysis)
Striation thickness (statistical analysis)
Distributive mixing index (statistical analysis)
User-defined indices (statistical analysis)
Vorticity number
Force, torque along user-specified boundaries (using the Mesh Superposition Technique)
Dissipated power
Convected heat
Heat/mass flux along user-specified boundaries
Tracking of material points
Generation of a Blow Molding Shell model using the results of a 2D axisymmetric parison extrusion simulation
Online Help and Documentation
Complete hypertext-based online documentation
User’s guide, including theory and application
Tutorial guide, with model-specific examples
Online access to the User Services Center
Online Getting Started
Partial online help in Japanese
Supported Hardware
Serial versions of POLYFLOW 3.10 are supported on most common UNIX, LINUX, and Windows/NT and 2000
platforms. Parallel versions of the code are available for SGI, Compaq α, HP-UX and Windows platforms.
Please contact Fluent Inc. for details.
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© 2003, Fluent Inc. All rights reserved. FLUENT, FIDAP, POLYFLOW, GAMBIT, MixSim, TGrid, and G/Turbo are registered
trademarks of Fluent Inc. All other products or name brands are trademarks of their respective holders. 0306-ELE
