Flow design and fusion 360

[arnou-verfaillie]

Hey

I have a small project going around with designing a header for my car. Just for educational purposes. 
Now I have made my design in Fusion 360 and I have been able to design my equal length headers with succes. Now my question is. Is there a way to make my header design compatible with flow design? I want to see how the flow is after collecting the headers and also what happens if we apply an anti-drone tube. 

I have tried all different exporting filetypes off fusion 360 (step,smt,...) and when I load the file into flow design, I just get a bal? I'm unable to load my header into flow design and I was wondering if anybody has a solution for this?

Thanks in advance

Arnou

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @arnou-verfaillie,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 Community! 

Off of the top of my head I am not sure why that would be happening. I have some experience with Flow Design so hopefully I can help you out! Can you send me a public link to your file so that I can try it out and identify the issue. Also, just to check, when you say you brought it into Flow Design you just get a bal. Can you elaborate a little more on that?

Thanks,

[arnou-verfaillie]

So the bal thing: I export my header into a step file (because that is supported by flow design right?). When i go to flow design and when i try to import the file from local, I choose the file and this is what I get: (attachment)

Sharing link: http://a360.co/1Pg6O40

This is not my final design but I wanted to try this out first, to see if i can flow test the header by itself. 

Thanks for your help!

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @arnou-verfaillie,

Very strange! I went ahead and exported a .stp file and then opened it in Flow Design and it seemed to work just fine. Check out the screen shot below. I've attached my step file so you can try that as well (this way we can try to narrow down where the issue is). I note that I can open the file one of two ways, I can right click the file from Windows Explorer and open it with Flow Design, or import the .stp file in from Flow Design. 

[arnou-verfaillie]

Well that is strange. I tried both methodes: Importing and opening from file explorer. Your file seems to work. I'll put my file in the attachment to see if you can open that?

So now i can open the file. Any idea how i can test the flow through the header or is flow design just for wind tunnels? Havent found any solution on the internet for that.

Thanks for the help allready!

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @arnou-verfaillie,

Hmm, very strange! But at least it is working now! I believe Flow Design is meant for wind tunnel applications only (although I am no expert with that product). Really, what I think you are looking for is an element of Computational Fluid Dynamics. I know Autodesk puts out a CFD product, but that may be overkill for what you are looking to do. Perhaps some other users on here have a clever idea - guys?

Thanks,

[arnou-verfaillie]

Ok, thanks for your help!

I will have a look into CFD. Maybe it might work.

[arnou-verfaillie]

I've uninstalled flow design and now I have reinstalled it due to another new project, where i do need a wind tunnel.

I have succesfully exported and imported my step file. However, my flow design does not see open spaces. I've design a radiator, where i would like to see what difference different shrouds make. But the wind does not goe through, it goes around. 

Am i doing something wrong here? My extrusions were cut through all in fusion 360. 

link to part: http://a360.co/21m2aHV

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @arnou-verfaillie,

I'm not an expert at all when it comes to Flow Design, but I honestly think it is just the limitation of the software. I played around with your model and changed a lot of the input settings in Flow Design (including how refined the mesh was as well as the bounding box for the wind tunnel) and the solvers were unable to solve the flow going through the inlet. The issue here, I believe, is that a really refined mesh is needed to get the accuracy the solver needs for the small inlets that you have (they are small if you take into consideration those vents you have) and my guess is that the mesh that Flow Design is generating is just too coarse to pick up those inlets. 

Feel free to reach out to the Flow Design forum here though!

[arnou-verfaillie]

Thanks I have indeed posted in the flow design forum aswell.