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What's new in PHOENICS 2007

PHOENICS-3.6.2 [2006] has been updated for its 2007 release. Updated features include:

Changes to the Earth Solver

• When PARSOL and GENTRA are active together, the particles will bounce from the true facetted surface of the object. Previously they bounced from the underlying fully-blocked cells, which could give rise to spurious reflection.
• The calculation of forces and moments on blockages has been extended to non-facetted objects - those which use cube***.dat as a geometry file. In addition, more control has been added so that the user can select which objects are included or excluded from a global summation of force and moment. The drag-and-lift-coefficients can also be printed if the user supplies normalising areas.
• Parallel PHOENICS has been amended to enable it to work satisfactorily with moving objects.
• The calculation of forces and moments is correct for cylindrical-polar coordinates.
• The time-history plots in RESULT can now extend to 99999 steps.

Changes to VR Editor

• The objects to be included or excluded from the force summation can be selected from a list.
• In Flair/HOTBOX the file holding the fan-characteristics curves can be edited directly from within the interface.
• In Flair/HOTBOX the fan options present in the fan data file are presented as a selectable list.
• In Flair there are two sight-length variables, for weakly-reflective and light-emitting objects.
• Save as a case and Open existing case save and restore intermediate step/sweep files.
• Point_history object can select which variable(s) to create time history information for.
• Possibility to show thumbnails of geometry files

Changes to VR Viewer

• The tabs of the Options dialog have been updated to provide more control over the displayed image without having to click the toolbar or handset icons.
• 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.
• Built-in interfaces to TECPLOT and FIELDVIEW extended to BFC multi-block.
• 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.
• Improved control of lighting for objects.
• Use of textures to improve realism of display.
• Wireframe display switchable for each object.

For more background to these, and earlier changes, see “What’s New in PHOENICS”