PHOENICS Phrase Book
Visitors to a new country need to learn a few words of the
native language. Here are the meanings of those you are
most likely to need in 'PHOENICS land',
arranged alphabetically. If you would like more detail, see the relevant
information stored in the on-line
PHOENICS Encyclopaedia.
- CAD: abbreviation for Computer-Aided Design, many software
packages for which describe objects in files which PHOENICS can import.
- Cell: an element of space, often box-like in shape, for
which PHOENICS calculates balances of mass, momentum and energy.
- CFD: abbreviation for Computational Fluid Dynamics, the
science on which PHOENICS is based.
- EARDAT: the name of a file which SATELLITE writes
in the working directory and which EARTH then reads. It
contains, in compressed form, nearly all the instructions about the
calculations which are to be made.
The remainder of the instructions are contained in 'facetdat'
and/or 'xyz'.
- EARTH: the
name used for the equation-solver module of PHOENICS. In the beginning,
the PHOENICS system was conceived as shown
here with many 'SATELLITEs' in orbit around 'EARTH'.
- GCV: a special
formulation of equations used for body-fitted coordinates.
- Grid: the array of cells which fill the space for which
PHOENICS is calculating the flow.
- GUI: i.e. Graphical User Interface, also called
VR-environment, VR-Editor and VR-Viewer.
- Input: the information that must be supplied to PHOENICS so
that it knows what calculation to make.
- Macro: the name given to a file containing a
succession of commands which are understood and obeyed by a program
module, usually PHOTON, Viewer or satellite
- Output: i.e. what the PHOENICS calculation produces,
contained, in differing formats, in the files: PHI and RESULT.
- Patch: an area (or volume) at which initial or boundary
conditions are supplied, defined by the Patch command.
- PHI: this file is designed to be read not by humans but by
the VR-Viewer or other graphical-display programs, and
by EARTH when it re-starts, i.e. resumes and continues a
previously-started calculation.
- PHOTON: One of the graphical-display programs supplied with
PHOENICS.
- PIL: abbreviation for the PHOENICS Input Language.
You do not have to learn it, because the Input module of PHOENICS,
called Satellite, in VR-Editor mode, reads it and writes it for you.
All the same, the more you know about it, the better you will understand what is going on behind the scene.
- READVDU: a PIL command which, when the satellite
finds it in a Q1 file, causes the executable to wait for a
keyboard input from the user.
- Q1: the name of the Input File. It is a sequence of
PIL statements, some of which are not difficult to understand.
For example, RHO1=1.189 means that the density (RHO) of the first phase
(e.g. air) is 1.189 kg/cubic meter.
- Q1EAR: the name of a file which is written by the satellite and which expresses the information implied by the Q1 in explicit and formalised terms.
- Q3: A file named Q3 is used by the PRELUDE pre-pre-processor module of PHOENICS in order to save data-settings which have been made inter-actively. Unlike the Q1 file written by the Satellite pre-processor, the Q3 preserves the relations between data items.
- RESULT: the name of a file in which PHOENICS prints the values which
it has been asked (by the Q1 file) to calculate and print.
- SATELLITE: The data-input module, which can operate simply as a Q1-file reader, or as a program with which the user can interact either in text or GUI modes.
- Spellout: A utility which reads the input file and expresses its content in
more-understandable English.
- VR: 'Virtual Reality', which is the label which is attached to the
GUI of PHOENICS. It is used for both input of data and
display of output.
- WinPHOTON: A graphical-display program, with functionality
similar to PHOTON, but more 'Windows-like' in 'look-and-feel'.
