For solving numerical fluid dynamics simulations, it is necessary to have access to certain hardware and software.

Hardware

At our institute, we can use the high-performance-cluster (HPC) of the Thünen-Institute. Currently, two virtual machines (VM) each with 98 cores, 128 GB RAM and 100 GB virtual memory are available to us. They run with a Linux system. Depending on the needs of the current project and the utilization of the HPC, the properties of the VM can be changed quickly.

Software

In order to solve the simulations, we use the commercial software Star-CCM+ by Siemens PLM in the newest version available at each project start. It is a solver that also has a meshing algorithm and versatile possibilities for presenting the simulation’s results. Moreover, it is possible to build up and change even complex geometries within the program.