In our recent webinar on Design space exploration with Simcenter STAR-CCM+ we showed you one specific feature in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ which unleashes your design space exploration: the Replace Part Operation. This operation leverages the power of Simcenter STAR-CCM+s pipelined workflow and lets you streamline your investigation of design alternatives. In this weeks blog article we would like to highlight and elaborate this functionality.
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ has completely automated (and thus simplified) the workflow. This is achieved through a pipelined process which is replay-able with just a couple of clicks. This means in practice that once you have built and tested your first prototype, any updates to it are seamless and automatic.
Replace Part Operation (Geometry > Operation > New > Surface Preparation > Replace Part) allows you to repeat the meshing pipeline with one or more different parts. You can replace a target part with an existing part (Source Part) from the Geometry > Parts node or with a part stored in an external file. For an external file, you can either pick a file directly, or you can reference a file-based global parameter that contains the file path. When the replacement part is defined by a file input from a global parameter, you can use Design Manager to supply a list of file names and sweep through them in a design study with the Design Manager.
When replacing a part, you require a place holder part that holds the geometry of the replacement part. This place holder part becomes the Target Part in the replace part operation. The place holder part can be an individual part or a composite part (assembly). When replacing a composite part, both the target and source parts must be similar (for example, the source part must be an assembly if the target is an assembly).
When importing from an external file, you can only import a discrete mesh file to replace a discrete leaf-level mesh part. And similar, you can only replace a CAD part with another CAD part. When choosing a CAD file as a source part for a discrete mesh target part, an additional Tessellation Options node appears under the replace part operation node. Here, you can define the tessellation parameters.
Surfaces of your replacing part are mapped by names. Ideally, the new geometry that you want to import has the same surfaces and the same name giving. However, with the Default Target Surface option in Expert settings, unmapped surfaces can be assigned to a fall-back surface name to ensure that the boundaries will are assigned. The video below show you the required steps the utilize the Replace Part Operation, both manually in a simulation and in a Design Manager project.
The Replace Part Operation offers you an easy entry to the world of Design Space Exploration. It does not require any parametric modelling and can be set up with the Design Manager that comes with your standard Simcenter STAR-CCM+ license configuration. We at Volupe hope this post has been useful. Questions, as usual, are sent to support@volupe.com. Happy exploring!