Fan Model

[Anonymous]

I have a fan blade model inside a fluid model.

I deactivated the fan part, then did mesh the fluid part. I am trying to create a RFR.

I can not find surfaces of fluid that contact the fan blades... ???

[Jacob.Xu|Autodesk]

Amosman,

Let me understand your question a bit further:

1. Did you have difficulty when selecting the contact surface because they are hiding inside the fluid part?
2. Or, you did not see the contact surfaces of the fluid part after you have hidden the external surfaces of the fluid part? 

For #1, you probably want to hide the external surfaces such that the internal contact surfaces are visible.

For #2, I would like to know how you created the fluid part. Did you create a fluid part with the blade part in CAD system and then import it to Algor? Or you created the fluid part in Algor using the command from menu: "Mesh>Fluid Generation>External..."? Or you created the fluid part using structured meshing tools?

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jacob,

I have the fluid part modeled first as solid in inventor, then I inserted the fan inside the fluid solid.

I opened the assembly in Agor.

I deactivated the fan part.

I only can see surfaces for the fluid model, and do not see any surfaces related to the fan.

Thanks...

[Jacob.Xu|Autodesk]

Thanks for the clarification, Amosman.

According to your steps, I assume that you did not remove the space of the blade part from the fluid part in Inventor. If so, you may want to use boolean tools in Inventor in order to shape the contact surfaces in the fluid part before sending the CAD model to Algor.There are many ways to hollow the fluid part in Inventor, though. If you are on Inventor 2010 or plus, you will be able to leverage the multiple solid body concept to create a multiple solid part with two bodies (the blade and fluid part). You may take this concept as a lightweight assembly and use the "Combine" command to cut the blank body (fluid part) using the tool body (blade part). If you are using Inventor 2009 or an earlier version, you may want to use other boolean methods (sculpt surfaces, or deriving an intermediate assembly with the boolean operations, etc.) to hollow the fluid part.

In Algor, you are allowed to create external fluid part (a block surrounding the blade part) and at the same time remove the shared space to form contact surfaces of the fluid part. If you are Okay with the block shape of the external fluid part, then you can avoid modeling the fluid part in Inventor. The generated fluid part is also a solid CAD model but natively created by Algor itself. The difference is that you are able to modify the definition or delete the part comparing to those imported CAD models.

There are, of course, other choices to model the fluid part in Algor. However, that would include many manual steps and would be somewhat complicated for FE modeling in this case.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Jacob..

I'll give it a try..