Compatibility Between Models
Summary
The new features of PHOENICS 2009 are described in What's New in PHOENICS 2009: TR006.
Further descriptions can be found in The
PHOENICS-VR Reference Guide; TR 326, and in the PHOENICS Encyclopaedia.
This document describes changes to existing models since the previous major
release,3.6.1, and lists some important limitations and changes in behaviour.
'3.6' refers to all versions of 3.6
'3.6.0', '3.6.1', '2006'and '2007', '2008' refer specifically to those sub-versions.
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Phoenics September 2009
- PLATE objects completely outside domain not sent to Earth.
- Near-plane depth reset afer importing CAD geometry.
- Ensure FIINIT(SMOK) is always initialised to zero however SMOK is created. Also reset to
zero when Restart switched off in Menu.
- Enormous domain no longer disappears behind far plane.
- Link to 'previous' or 'next' on ANGLED-IN dialog
Phoenics August 2009
- WIND object can create floor plane.
- WIND object adds pressure boundaries on all non-inflow faces e.g. East, West and South
when wind is from North and Z is up. Previously only South would have had pressure
boundary and East and West would be symmetry planes.
- Geometry files reorganised. Files in SHAPES folder given meaningful names, and old files
moved to DEPRECATED folder for downward compatibility.
- Corrections to treatment of U velocity at inlets for polar cases. Now fully obeys
velocity/angular velocity/angular momentum setting.
- Error for 'PARENT=CHAM' in Editor repaired.
- Error which allowed domain size to change unexpectedly when in Geometry panel fixed.
- FLAIR: Allowance for heat lost by radiation (radiative fraction) when setting fire heat
source.
- FLAIR: FIRE object shows choice of fire speeds for t2 fire
- Reference length and velocity for conwiz displayed on relaxation dialog. WIND object
sets reference length to average domain size.
- FLAIR: correction to displacement diffuser when area ratio < 1
- Correction to WIND object when wind angle < 0.
- Allow change in font size.
- Introduce clipping plane objects.
- Corrections to 'spin' option for blockage - rotation centre was not correct for some
orientations.
- INFOB objects displayed.
- Longer file names allowed for BFC READCO command.
- Comments allowed on LABEL lines in Q1.
- Introduce ambient pressure and temperature for use as default initial and external
values. Deduce buoyancy reference values from ambient.
- New dialog for attaching InForm commands directly to objects.
- FLAIR: Better linearisation for FIRE object heat source. Heat and mass source from FIRE
object may now appear as separate patches.
- Q1 formatting changed to use more 'human-like' number formats.
- TECPLOT, Fieldview and VTK files added to list of files saved as a case.
- 'polcu' geometries used for default polar geometries updated to use more segments in
radial direction, resulting in smoother display of surfaces.
- Patches linked to USER_DEFINED object now listed by name as object attributes for the
object. The object number (IXL in patch command) set to -1 to allow Editor to determine
object number.
- FAN object uses in-cell density when set to extract rom domain boundary.
- Inlet KE and EP values for ANGLED-IN set to volume or mass flow corrected.
- Setting of defaults for BLOCKAGE object improved so that correct defaults are still
shown if new object is immediately switched to fluid.
Phoenics November 2008
- FLAIR: add derivation and storage of Optical Density
- Correction to group move - if some objects were rotated the size of the group was
wrongly calculated which could lead to incorrect placement of the group.
Phoenics October 2008
- Length of Q1 line increased from 132 characters (68 characters and one
continuation line) to 1024 characters split over as many continuation lines as needed.
- In 3D case, get inlet EP from lengthscale based on 0.1*hydraulic radius of inlet object
(4*area/perimeter/2) rather than 0.1 of half smallest inlet dimension. For 2D case use 0.1
of inlet height, as inlet height is hydraulic radius.
Phoenics September 2008
- Allow View centre to be set to probe position from probe Location Dialog.
- New WIND object to set wind profiles and outlets from wind speed and wind direction.
Phoenics August 2008
- FLAIR: Error in JETFAN object corrected - downward velocity component was not always
correct.
- Allow number of sweeps per time step to be set from Main Menu - Numerics panel.
- Enable use of quadratic pressure coefficient at outlet and angled-out objects.
- Ensure phi file is saved and restored even when renamed with 'NSAVE='.
- Switch PHIDA=T/F as necessary when opening existing cases.
Phoenics June 2008
- FLAIR: When FIRE object is created, maximum increment for temperature is reset to 10
deg/sweep unless user has alread set another value.
- Occasional error with 'at_end' objects, especially in Polar, which made them bigger than
the domain until after 'Reload working files' fixed.
- POB files can contain PIL statements as well as > OBJ lines.
- Import by group function extended to include DAT files.
- Private geometry DAT files and exported POB files can be located in sub-folders of the
current working directory, as well as the working directory.
- Maximum number of facets in one object increased from 999999 to 9999999 (I6 to I7).
- Main Menu - Relaxation panel changed to provide linear/false time step toggle. All
values now positive.
- Correction to mass flow at inlet when area ratio < 1 and object is not cuboid.
- FLAIR. Correction when PERSON object is assigned an initial temperature (transient mode
only).
- LITER(P1) for empty case set to 50 (was 200). This is now same as 'Reset solution
defaults' on Numerics - Relaxation panel.
- If errors are detected when an Earth run is requested, the Earth run will not start.
- InForm command processor made more tolerant of stray spaces in commands. Also checks
correct number of open/close brackets before starting Earth run.
- Correction to per-unit-area heat source on face of non-participating (198) blockage.
Patch type was wrongly set which resulted in incorrect heat source.
- 'Reset' button on object dialog made more reliable when more than one object selected.
- Object attribute dialog forced to come to front.
- Clicking on domain when object attribute dialog open no longer closes object dialog.
- InForm source attached to object will use same patch as 'normal' source whenever
possible to avoid duplication of sources.
Phoenics April 2008
- Memory allocation for CVD surface-to-surface radiation module made dynamic.
- 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.
- Correction to highlighting of selected points and lines in BFC grid generator.
- For WIND_PROFILE object, profile starts in first un-blocked cell in each column.
- Editor can show thumbnails of geometry files.
- POINT_HISTORY object can select which variables are to be monitored.
- 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.
- FLAIR. Error when reading humidity units for inlet, person and diffuser objects fixed.
- ROTOR object in polar coordinates allows rotating grid.
- InForm editor and other utilities now executables, so no need to install TCL.
- Drawing of objects in wireframe enabled on per-object basis.
- ESTER. Correction to setting of bath and electrolyte viscosity.
- Informbegin/end changed to savebegin/end. save25 added to save domain and object
attributes.
- Correction to grid matching when assembly object is rotated.
- Separate increment size for each direction.
- Snap-to-grid feature - objects must be multiples of increment.
Phoenics August 2007
- Save as a case/Open existing case offer to save intermediate step/sweep files.
- Allow control over lighting applied to scene.
- Allow texture to be applied to any object. Name of texture file is saved to Q1.
- FLAIR. Second sight length added.
- FLAIR. TEM1 always reverts to STATIC on reloading Q1 after switch to TOTAL. Fixed.
- Correction to position of 'Apply' button on BFC menu Point location dialog.
- Save and restore non-default settings for OMEG,KT,KP,ET & VOSQ.
Phoenics April 2007
- Fix indexing error when reading inlet values for phase 2.
- Allow for KOMODL-LOWRE when setting boundary conditions for OMEG.
- Once initial pressure enabled for fluid object, cannot turn it off again. Fixed.
- If restart file name changed, then restored to default, Earth fails with 'cannot find
file cham' error. Fixed.
- HOTBOX/FLAIR. Option provided to edit fan data file from within Editor and select fan
type from scroll list.
- Crash with internal format overflow when setting phase 2 properties from user PRPS file
corrected.
- Non alpha-numeric characters are stripped from the input string before processing by
command interpreter.
- When reading Q1, a check is made to see if PATCH commands are attached to objects which
have USER_DEFINED or CELLTYPE types. For all other object types an error message is
displayed. This situation can only arise when a user edits a Q1 by hand and makes an error
in assigning PATCH commands to objects.
Phoenics December 2006
- InForm gives error message if VOLU, AREA or WHOLE flags are used for non-VR patches.
- When changing object type from USER_DEFINED to any other, dialog offers option to delete
all user-set patches for this object.
- Cuboid objects which don't fit the grid (e.g. because of large tolerance) treated as
faceted. This allows Earth to scale any source correctly.
Phoenics October 2006
- Allow hardware acceleration to be turned off from CHAM.INI file - full acceleration
sometimes causes incomplete refresh of screen.
- GROUP object allowed in middle of object list - used to cause sequence error in locating
objects in Solver.
- Editor warns if ANGLED_IN/OUT object used with PARSOL=F.
- When using a volume object for an area type or vice-versa, allow dimension change from
warning dialog.
- Error in reading ASSEMBLY objects corrected.
- Missing 'Endfacet' lines added to optional STL output.
- Allow more than 25 ARC lines in BFC mesh generator. Allow more than 25 mouse-points in
BFC mesh generator.
- Non-integer object sizes and positions trapped for BFC and error message issued.
- LSTEP no longer truncated to 9999.
- Improve poor behaviour when too many cells or time-steps requested. Setting now
abandoned as soon as limit reached so error message is only displayed once.
- Default geometries are not looked for unless an object of that type is read or created.
- Correct sequencing error when cuboid object completely outside domain.
- Get correct cell locations for cuboid object partially or wholly outside the domain.
- Repair error which prevented friction patches being generated around a 198 blockage for
BFC-GCV.
- When an InForm source is attached to a patch having the same name as an object, 3.6
ignored the patch and attached the source to the object. The source is now attached to the
patch, as it was in earlier versions.
- Allow for comment lines longer than 68 characters in Q1.
- Prevent infinite loop when evaluation of variable in :: in >OBJ line fails.
- Improved accuracy of reporting line numbers of errors found in Q1.
- Speed of writing EARDAT for large cases improved.
- File names can be 256 characters long.
- Editor issues warning if INFORnBEGIN does not have matching INFORMnEND.
- Number of times grid is matched during reading of Q1 reduced.
- Radiating plate source corrected for cuboid object.
- CCV collocated velocity solver removed as not used.
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Phoenics September 2009
- Better error trapping for non-existent files when changing time steps.
Phoenics August 2009
- Better handling of contour scale range and variable name when moving between saved
steps/sweeps. These could sometimes get lost.
- Macro can advance by user-set number of steps - 'FILE + n'.
- Near-plane depth saved to macro file.
- Better attribution of units to plotted variables.
- Contour scale display can be switched to FPS or cgs units.
- When domain is scaled, vector heads retain original scaling.
- Correction to display of 'polcu' geometries used for moving objects in MOFOR or ROTOR.
Phoenics November 2008
- Reduce number of time objects are redrawn.
- Add macro 'ANIMATE FILE' keyword to specify name of animation file to be written.
Phoenics September 2008
- Make compatible with new PBCL.DAT format, whilst maintaining compatibility with previous
format.
- Allow saving of window image as JPG file.
- FLAIR: Calculate Beer-Lambert visibility reduction as post-processing option.
- Allow View Centre to be set to position of minimum or maximum value from Probe Location
dialog
Phoenics August 2008
- When 'Cancel' is pressed on Macro dialog, further attempts to run or save macros fail
until Editor is shut and restarted. Corrected.
Phoenics June 2008
- Correction to surface contour. Now strictly obeys contour averaging on/off switch, so
raw (unaveraged) data can be saved to surface value and profile data files.
- Surface contours redawn automatically when contour averaging switched on or off, and
when contour colour scale inverted.
- Correction to contour plotting in cut cell when facet passes directly through
bottom-left and top-right corners of cell. If solid part was to right, fluid and solid
parts were plotted reversed.
Phoenics February 2008
- Selection of multiple streamlines in streamline management dialog speeded up.
- Added handling of PHOTON-style PLINE elements.
- Save image as jpg file.
Phoenics August 2007
- Create line plot of any variable between two points.
- Improve behaviour of F7/F8 keys when final solution selected from F6. Now goes to last
step/sweep, previously went to first.
- Scan RESULT for data pertaining to time-step/sweep being plotted for 'Show result'.
- Change object profile and surface file format to comma-separated, and file extension
from .prf/.srf to .csv for easier input to Excel.
- Adjustment of internal tolerance when contour plotting in cylindrical-polar coordinates
with PARSOL.
- Allow free choice of variables for generating vectors.
- Add dialog to control lighting of scene.
- Error message displayed if no data found in RESULT for time-history. Viewer could hang.
- Reorganise Contour/Vector/Surface Options dialogs.
Phoenics April 2007
- Allow choice of Total, X-Y, X-Z or Y-Z components for vectors.
- Allow for user-set colour palette.
- Corrections to contour plotting for PARSOL in cylindrical-polar coordinates when cut
cell lies in -ve Y quadrants.
- Allow vector plotting to omit one velocity component to display secondary flow.
- Allow animation of phase 2 vectors.
Phoenics December 2006
- Viewer allows vectors to be plotted in a single colour.
- Viewer allows EPOT variable to be plotted inside participating solids.
- Viewer reads cut-cell data file PBCL.DAT using fixed format, allowing for larger number
of cut cells.
- Viewer does not use OBID to blank cells if MOFOR is not active.
- Under some circumstances F8 in Viewer advanced to the last step instead of the next
step.
- If the contour range is changed from the default, and then a user-set iso-surface is
plotted, the contour range was reset to default. The user-set values are now retained.
- Viewer does not change the name of U1 to US1 for GCV. UCRT is shown as X-Velocity, and
UC1 is shown as UC1.
