Changes introduced since March 2009

• An Automatic Grid Generator has been provided for Unstructured PHOENICS. This automatically refines an coarse initial grid so as to give better resolution near object surfaces and other features of interest.

• SHELLFLO, a new PRELUDE-based gateway, has been created for simulating flow and heat transfer within shell-and-tube heat exchangers.
• New tutorials have been provided to assist with the creation of Parameterized Q1 files, which play a crucial role in the relational-data-input capabilities of PHOENICS.

• Detailed improvements and extensions have been made to:
  • The Wind object,
  • FLAIR features, specifically those connected with simulating fires, radiation and visibility.
  • The setting of ambient conditions in environmental problems.
  • The clipping-plane feature of the VR Editor and Viewer

Changes made between PHOENICS April 2008 and March 2009

• The 'Dot-patch' feature has been introduced so as to set patch limits in terms x-y-z co-ordinates rather than grid indices.

• Thin inclined plates have been inplemented by way of the new Plane Quadrilateral In-form object.

• Improvements have been made to the way in which In-Form statements can be introduced by way of the VR-Editor.

• A new SPINTO feature has been provided, for making re-start runs on successively finer grids so as to accelerate convergence.

Changes made between PHOENICS August 2007 and April 2008

• The protected mode of satellite operation was created, so as to facilitate. relational data input.

• The Unstructured PHOENICS, USP option was introduced

• Solid-stress-simulation feature uses collocated displacements as alternative to staggered displacements.

• Objects can be tagged to always be at domain end, and to extend to domain end. Makes changing domain size easier as tagged objects will follow automatically.
• For WIND_PROFILE object, profile starts in first un-blocked cell in each column.
• FLAIR. Fire and smoke dialogs updated to use current standards terminology.
• FLAIR. Diffusers can be rotated about any axes.
• Objects can still be selected when grid mesh display is on by holding down Ctrl key.
• InForm editor and other utilities now executables, so no need to install TCL.
• Drawing of objects in wireframe enabled on per-object basis.
• Separate increment size for each direction.
• Snap-to-grid feature - objects must be multiples of increment.
• Added handling of PHOTON-style PLINE elements.
• Save image as jpg file.
• MOFOR enabled in parallel.
• CVD enabled in parallel.
• Allow use of {} to denote physical coordinates for variable location in InForm.
• Better initial guess at size of F array required, and use of scratch file if expansion fails. Should allow bigger cases to run on 32-bit systems.
• Use of material >= 299 for blockage treats cut cells as blocked and opens un-cut cells. Allows simple angled thin plate treatment.

For more details about the above changes click here

Changes made between PHOENICS October 2006 and August 2007

• Use of textures
• Improved control of lighting for objects
• Possibility to show thumbnails of geometry files
• Save as a case and Open existing case save and restore intermediate step/sweep files.
• In Flair/HOTBOX the file holding the fan characteristics curves can be edited directly from within the interface.
• In Flair/HOTBOX the list of fans present in the fan data file is presented as a selectable list.
• In Flair there are two sight-length variables, for weakly-reflective and light-emitting objects.
• Point_history object can select which variable(s) to create time history information for.
• When PARSOL and GENTRA are active together, the particles will bounce from the true facetted surface of the object.
• Parallel PHOENICS has been amended to enable it to work satisfactorily with moving objects,
• The calculation of forces and moments on blockages has been extended to non-facetted objects which use cube***.dat as a geometry file.
• The calculation of forces and moments is correct for cylindrical-polar coordinates.
• The time-history plots in RESULT can now extend to 99999 steps.
• Built-in interfaces to TECPLOT and FIELDVIEW extended to BFC multi-block.
• The tabs of the Options dialog have been updated to provide more control over the displayed image.
• The user can select any 1, 2 or 3 variables to use as vector components.
• The vector component normal to the plotting plane can be toggled on or off to assist in visualising secondary flows.
• A line graph of any variable can be drawn between two specified points.
• 'Show Results' scans through RESULT for the data relating to the time-step (or sweep) currently being plotted.

For more details about the above changes click here

Changes made between PHOENICS version 3.6.1 and 2006

• The location of the PHOENICS installation is now held in an environment variable.
• The handset buttons are now repeated on the tool bar.
• Text can be added to annotate the image.
• The domain axes can be positioned anywhere.
• A larger font size is used for dialogs to make them more legible.
• It is possible to turn the hardware acceleration of the graphics card off with a switch in the CHAM.INI file.
• An auto-meshing feature has been added.
• New ANGLED-IN and ANGLED-OUT object types have been created.
• The treatment of Polar geometries has been significantly updated.
• The treatment of INLET objects in Polar co-ordinates has been improved.
• The 'Slide velocity' can be set for blockages as well as for plates.
• The input for multiple STL import is now taken from a multiple-file-selection dialog not from a list-file as previously.
• For MOFOR, the MOF files controlling the motion can be created and edited directly from the Sources page of the Main menu.
• The Editor can output the entire geometry in TECPLOT format.
• When PARSOL is active, the cut cells are calculated properly for polar geometries.
• For buoyancy-driven flows, the effect of buoyancy on turbulence has been generalised
• The solution can be output in TECPLOT format.
• Domain partitioning has been introduced via transfer objects.
• When PARSOL is active in Polar co-ordinates,  the contours and vectors in the cut cells are displayed correctly.
• When cyclic boundary conditions are active, an extra tab appears on the Viewer Options dialog, from which it is possible to repeat the image in X direction as many times as wanted.
• For selected objects, the surface contour values can be output to a file which can be read into Excel or Autoplot.
• For selected objects, a surface profile on the current plotting plane can be output to a file which can be read into Excel or Autoplot.
• The palette for contour plots can be reversed.
• The size of the saved image can be controlled from a macro file.
• Many internal efficiencies have been implemented to speed up the plotting of large cases.
• The vectors can be plotted in any user-selected single colour.

For more details about the above changes click here

Changes made between PHOENICS version 3.5.1 and 3.6.0 and 3.6.1

• The extension of the PHOENICS object concept so as to permit both geometric and non-geometric attributes to be stored together
• Provision of a 'guaranteed convergence' feature
• Further developments in respect of fluid-structure interactions
• Provision of numerous new features in the graphical user interface
• Many improvements to FLAIR , the special-purpose program for HVAC and fires in buildings
• Extensions to the PHOENICS Commander
• A re-working of Shapemaker which can now add and store non-geometric attributes of objects, as well as creating their shapes
• Easier remote access via 'PHOENICS-on-line'
• The use of Dynamic storage in all modules
• Major upgrades to PHOTON and AUTOPLOT
• Restoration and extension of Parallel PHOENICS .

For more details about the above changes click here

Changes made between PHOENICS version 3.5.0 and 3.6.0

• Fluid-structure interactions
  1. Curved surfaces in cartesian grids, PARSOL
  2. Moving frames of reference, MOFOR
  3. Solid-fluid-thermal analysis, SFT
• Data-input and results-display improvements
  1. Data-input by way of formulae
     1. Prescribing the motion of moving objects
     2. Ascribing arbitrary sources to objects
  2. The Virtual-Reality interface, VR
• New and improved utilities
  1. The PHOENICS Commander
  2. FacetFix
  3. ShapeMaker
  4. Nu-PHOTON

For more details about the above changes click here

Changes made between PHOENICS version 3.4 and 3.5.0

• In-Form Extensions
• BFC Menu improvements
• GENTRA Menu improvements
• VR Editor improvements
• VR Viewer improvements
• COSP
• AC3D
• Parallel PHOENICS developments
• Property-selection treatment
• MFM developments
• SFT developments
• PARSOL improvements
• COFFUS-related extensions
• The library-search facility
• Conversion to Imperial and other units
• Coming soon
  1. A new PHOTON
  2. More about moving bodies"
• Changes in settings and practices between 3.4 and 3.5
• New features of Phoenics version 3.3 .

For more details about the above changes click here

Contents of 'What's new in PHOENICS April 2008'

Changes Common to VR Editor and VR Viewer

Changes to VR Editor

Changes to the Earth Solver

Changes to VR Viewer

Changes Common to VR Editor and VR Viewer

• Separate increment size for each direction.

The 'increment' determines:

• how far the probe will move,
• how far an object will move
• by how much the object size will change

each time the up/down arrows are pressed. When the domain sizes are very different in each direction, say in a tunnel, the use of a single increment size made it hard to control this satisfactorily. There are now separate increment sizes in each direction.

• Snap-to-grid feature - when ticked, objects change size and move in multiples of 'increment'. The position must also be a multiple of 'increment'. This can make it easier to ensure that objects always line up thus eliminating spuriously thin cells.
• The drawing of objects in wireframe has been extended to a per-object basis. The 'master' wire-frame toggle operates on the selected object(s), reverting to all objects if none are selected.
• When the grid mesh display was on, the grid mesh dialog would appear for a mouse-click anywhere on the screen. It now appears only when the mouse is over the mesh. In addition, objects can still be selected from the screen when the grid mesh display is on by holding down the Ctrl key.

Changes to VR Editor

• Objects can be tagged to extend to the domain end.

They can also be tagged to always lie at the domain end.

This makes changing the domain size easier as tagged objects will follow automatically.

• For the WIND_PROFILE object, the profile starts in the first un-blocked cell in each column. Previously it always started at the lower boundary of the object. This makes it easier to introduce wind profiles over terrain objects, as shown simply below:

• In FLAIR, the fire and smoke dialogs have been updated to use current standards terminology. The Smoke Settings dialog now refers to Heat of Combustion, Particulate smoke yield and Mass specific extinction coefficient. These values can be found in references such as the CIBSE Guide E.

• In FLAIR diffuser objects can be rotated about any axes. Previously they had to align with the grid.
• The InForm Editor (now renamed Save Block Editor) and other TCL-based utilities such as Facetfix are now supplied as executables, so there is no need to install TCL.

Changes to the Earth Solver

• MOFOR has been enabled in parallel PHOENICS.
• CVD has been enabled in parallel PHOENICS.
• To reference the value of a variable at a specific location, the physical co-ordinates can be enclosed in {}, for example the temperature at (3.2,5.8,2.5) is TEM1{3.2&5.8&2.5). Previously only cell locations could be given as TEM1[3&8&5].
• A better initial guess at the size of the F array required for the case has been provided. If a further expansion fails due to lack of memory, a scratch file is used for temporary storage. This allows bigger cases to run on 32-bit systems without adjustment of CHAM.INI.
• The use of material >= 299 for blockage causes cut cells to be treated as blocked and opens un-cut cells. The image shows the detection of a variety of curved surfaces.

Changes to VR Viewer

• The handling of PHOTON-style PLINE elements has been added.
• Images can be saved as jpg files, in addition to the previous options of gif, bmp and pcx.