Counterflow within a Canal — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate counterflow in a canal and analyze the resulting fluid behavior. The setup features a main water stream moving along the canal while a second stream is injected in the opposite direction from a floor-mounted pipe. The opposing jet disturbs the flow and the free surface, creating a localized interaction between the two streams that is characteristic of many practical canal and hydraulic-mixing situations. Within the Hydraulic & Civil: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project extends open-channel modeling to a case where two opposing flows interact, building on the earlier river case toward more complex free-surface behavior.MethodologyThe three-dimensional geometry, built in DesignModeler, represents a straight channel 8 m long with a 3 m × 1 m rectangular cross-section, with a 4 m long pipe of 0.05 m diameter lying along the canal floor. Meshing in ANSYS Meshing yields 256,899 elements, and a transient solver is used. The main channel inflow velocity is 0.3 m/s, while the pipe issues flow at 2 m/s in the opposite direction. The region above the water surface is open to air, represented by a pressure-inlet boundary at 0 Pa gauge for ambient conditions. Because both water and air are present, a VOF multiphase model is employed, with the standard k–ε model for turbulence.AnalysisPost-processing provides 2D and 3D fields of pressure, velocity, and phase volume fraction for water and air. The opposing jet perturbs the free surface and entrains air, producing zones with a locally reduced water volume fraction where the counterflow interacts with the main stream. From these results you can evaluate how the opposing jet disturbs the main flow, how air is entrained at the free surface, and where the strongest mixing and interaction between the two streams occurs.

Cascade Flow over Stepped Hydraulic Structures — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionWelcome to the Cascade CFD Simulation module. This project introduces civil and hydraulic engineers to the dynamics of cascade structures using ANSYS Fluent. A cascade is a series of steps or drops that water flows over, and it plays a valuable engineering role in dam spillways, urban water features, and stormwater management — controlling the flow while dissipating its energy as it descends. What makes cascade flow distinctive is the stepped flow pattern and the strong aeration and air entrainment it promotes, which enhance both energy dissipation and water quality. Within the Hydraulic & Civil: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project marks the move into dedicated hydraulic structures, introducing stepped-flow energy dissipation as a bridge toward the spillway cases that follow.MethodologyThe workflow begins with creating a basic geometry representing a cascade structure and applying an appropriate meshing strategy for accurate flow analysis. The water properties are defined in ANSYS Fluent, and the boundary conditions are set to represent the cascade scenario — inlet flow rates and outlet conditions, together with wall and free-surface boundary conditions for the cascade steps, the walls, and the water–air interface. The solver parameters, including time-stepping and convergence criteria, are configured to suit a cascade hydraulic simulation, and the solution is monitored for stability and convergence throughout. Because the flow tumbles over the steps and interacts strongly with the surrounding air, the setup captures the air-water interaction central to cascade behavior.AnalysisPost-processing focuses on the flow patterns and energy dissipation over the steps. Velocity fields and streamlines are visualized to understand how the water moves over the stepped structure, while velocity profiles and energy-dissipation characteristics are examined to assess cascade performance and inform design. Air-entrainment patterns are identified to reveal how the cascade promotes aeration as the water descends. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up and run a basic cascade flow simulation in ANSYS Fluent, capture stepped-flow patterns and energy dissipation, interpret the velocity and aeration results, and apply those insights to cascade design and optimization for dam spillways, urban water features, and stormwater systems.

Flood Over a Bridge — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionA flood occurs when water overflows onto land that is normally dry — when a river exceeds its channel capacity, a levee is overtopped, or rainwater accumulates on saturated ground. Floods are a central concern in hydrology, civil engineering, and public health, and they pose a serious threat to man-made structures in a river's floodplain. This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate a flood surging through a dry riverbed and striking a bridge, with the goal of quantifying the forces the flood imposes on the bridge's pillars. Within the Hydraulic & Civil: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project applies free-surface modeling to a practical civil situation — flood loading on infrastructure — and introduces the extraction of structural loads from a CFD result.MethodologyThe geometry is built in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with an unstructured grid of 844,311 elements. The water–air system is modeled with the VOF (Volume of Fluid) multiphase approach, which tracks the free surface between the advancing flood water and the surrounding air. Water enters the computational domain — a dry river — at a velocity of 10 m/s, representing the incoming flood front. The simulation is run in transient, 3D form with gravity enabled (−9.81 m/s² in the Y-direction), and turbulence is handled with the standard k-ε model. The transient setup is essential here: a flood is an inherently time-dependent event, and capturing how the water front advances and loads the structure over time is the whole point.AnalysisAt the end of the solution, the results show clearly how a flood can damage and ultimately destroy a man-made structure like a bridge. One of the most important factors is the shear stress exerted on the bridge's pillars, which the simulation shows to be considerable. This kind of result has direct engineering value: it can inform the design of bridge pillars capable of withstanding extreme events like floods — choosing pillar shapes and structures that reduce the hydrodynamic loading. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a transient 3D free-surface VOF simulation, model a flood front advancing through a domain, and extract structural loads such as shear stress on submerged structures to support resilient civil engineering design.

Tank Charge (2-Phases), CFD Simulation Ansys Fluent TrainingDescriptionThis project models the filling — or "charge" — of a tank between two equal-height reservoirs using ANSYS Fluent. As water advances from one reservoir into the air-filled one, the two fluids exchange places: water flows in while air rises out, until the connected system settles into balance. The two-phase VOF approach captures this water–air interaction, reflecting the kind of phase separation and transfer operations that are common in chemical and petrochemical processing.What makes this case distinctive is its driving mechanism. Both vents are held at atmospheric pressure, so the transfer is driven purely by gravity and the pressure imbalance between the reservoirs rather than by a forced inlet velocity — a natural transfer problem rather than a pumped one, and a direct complement to the tank discharge project earlier in this package.MethodologyThe geometry consists of two 2-D reservoirs, each 1.25 × 2.5 m, built in Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with a structured grid of 32,510 cells.The case is solved as a pressure-based, transient simulation with gravity enabled at −9.81 m/s² along the Y direction. The water and air are tracked with the VOF model using two phases (air as primary, water as secondary), with a sharp interface and implicit formulation. Turbulence is modeled with the realizable k-ε model and standard wall functions. Both the inlet and outlet vents are set to 0 Pa gauge pressure, leaving gravity as the sole driver of the transfer.Pressure–velocity coupling uses the Coupled scheme, with PRESTO! for pressure discretization and the Compressive scheme for the volume fraction to keep the interface crisp. The case is initialized with the water region patched to a volume fraction of 1, then advanced with a 0.001 s time step over 10,000 steps.AnalysisAt the end of the solution process, 2-D contours of volume fraction, pressure, velocity, and turbulent kinetic energy are generated, along with an animation of the transfer process. The animation shows the mechanism clearly: air rises and escapes as the water advances into the air-filled tank, the two phases continuously exchanging places through the connected system.After several seconds of simulated time, the system approaches hydrostatic balance — equal pressure at equal elevations across the two connected reservoirs — confirming that the transfer reaches equilibrium exactly as expected from first principles. By completing this project, you will be able to set up a transient gravity-driven VOF simulation, configure pressure-vent boundaries for a natural transfer process, patch initial phase distributions, and interpret how a two-phase system evolves toward hydrostatic equilibrium.

Tank Discharge CFD Simulation, Ansys Fluent TrainingDescriptionThis project simulates the gravitational discharge of water through a multi-tank system using ANSYS Fluent. Tank discharge and transfer operations are a daily reality in gas and petrochemical plants, where liquids move between storage vessels under gravity through interconnected piping. The simulation employs the Volume of Fluid (VOF) multiphase model to capture the two-phase (water–air) flow dynamics and the evolving free surface as water drains from one tank and fills the next.The system consists of three interconnected tanks: a rectangular primary tank (229.4 mm × 157.7 mm) serving as the initial water reservoir, an octagonal secondary tank with uniform side lengths of 51.3 mm providing intermediate storage, and a rectangular tertiary tank (229.4 mm × 100 mm) acting as the final collection vessel. The design also includes air circulation pathways that maintain atmospheric pressure balance during discharge — a subtle but essential feature of real transfer systems.MethodologyThe two-dimensional geometry, including the three tanks and their connecting pipe network, is created in Design Modeler. An unstructured mesh of 15,310 elements is generated in ANSYS Meshing, providing adequate resolution for the free-surface dynamics and flow transitions between the tanks.The case is solved in transient mode with a pressure-based solver, with gravity applied at −9.81 m/s² along the y-axis as the driving force of the discharge. The VOF homogeneous model governs the two-phase flow, with air and water as the Eulerian phases; sharp interface modeling with interfacial anti-diffusion ensures accurate free-surface tracking, and the implicit formulation with implicit body force treatment provides solution stability. The flow is treated as laminar, appropriate for the low Reynolds numbers of gravitational discharge.The numerical setup uses SIMPLE pressure–velocity coupling, the PRESTO! scheme for pressure, second-order upwind for momentum, and the compressive scheme for volume fraction to keep the interface sharp. After standard initialization, the primary tank region is patched with a water volume fraction of 1. The solution advances with adaptive time stepping between 1×10⁻⁵ s and 0.001 s over 10,000 time steps to capture the complete discharge process.AnalysisAt the end of the solution process, contours of volume fraction, pressure, and velocity magnitude are extracted along with streamline patterns, tracking the discharge as it evolves in time. The results show the progressive transfer of water from the primary tank into the secondary tank, followed by overflow into the tertiary tank once the intermediate storage capacity is exceeded.The volume fraction contours clearly illustrate the free-surface evolution, with the VOF model capturing the interface deformation as water passes through the connecting pipes and fills the downstream tanks. The velocity and streamline results reveal the flow patterns inside each tank, while also demonstrating the role of the air circulation pathways in maintaining pressure equilibrium and preventing vacuum formation. By completing this project, you will learn to set up a transient VOF free-surface simulation, patch initial phase distributions, apply adaptive time stepping, and interpret discharge behavior in multi-vessel systems — insights directly applicable to pipe sizing, tank design, and venting requirements in industrial transfer operations.

Borehole Flow, ANSYS Fluent CFD Simulation TrainingDescriptionThe interaction between flowing fluids and the surrounding formation inside a borehole is a fundamental concern in upstream hydrocarbon operations, where drilling provides the principal access to subsurface reservoirs. This project simulates liquid–solid two-phase flow in a vertical wellbore using ANSYS Fluent, with the objective of characterizing how soil grains detach from the borehole wall and become entrained in the fluid stream — a process of direct relevance to wellbore stability and solids production in oil and gas wells.The physics captured here underlies several critical drilling phenomena: sand production, which erodes downhole and surface equipment and plugs the wellbore; hole enlargement caused by excessive wall scouring; and cuttings transport, which determines how effectively the drilling fluid cleans the hole. Understanding the conditions under which a formation begins to fail under imposed flow is essential for designing safer wells and better solids-control strategies.MethodologyThe simulation employs the Eulerian multiphase model, with water as the primary (continuous) phase and soil grains as the secondary (dispersed) phase. This formulation is appropriate for particle-laden flows in which the dispersed-phase volume fraction exceeds roughly ten percent — characteristic of the slurry-type regimes encountered in drilling and in petrochemical particulate processing.The computational domain is reduced to a representative cylindrical sector of the wellbore to limit computational cost. Water enters the central region of the well at 1.6 m/s together with soil particles at 1 m/s. Turbulence is modeled with the standard k–ε model with standard wall functions and the dispersed turbulence multiphase treatment, and the case is solved with an unsteady, pressure-based solver that resolves the evolving flow field and phase distribution over time.AnalysisAt the end of the solution process, contours of phase volume fraction and velocity are extracted for both phases. The results show that a portion of the soil grains is liberated from the borehole wall and joins the fluid stream, while some fluid simultaneously penetrates into the formation. This behavior demonstrates the governing condition for solids detachment: the shear stress generated at the fluid–solid interface exceeds the cohesive adhesion holding the soil grains together.These findings carry direct engineering implications. Identifying the threshold at which interfacial shear overcomes grain cohesion provides a physical basis for predicting sand production; the same fluid–formation interaction governs wellbore stability, where controlled flow preserves wall integrity while excessive scouring promotes instability; and the computed volume-fraction and velocity fields inform the assessment of drilling-fluid carrying capacity and cuttings transport. By completing this project, you will learn to set up an Eulerian liquid–solid simulation, apply the dispersed turbulence treatment, and interpret phase-distribution results in the context of real drilling and completion operations.

Description: A bubble trap is a deceptively simple device that solves an important problem in chemical and process engineering: removing unwanted gas bubbles from a liquid stream, relying purely on buoyancy to let bubble-laden fluid slow down inside a chamber so the lighter gas rises and separates while clean liquid exits below. This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate that separation process and observe the trap performing its function in real time.Methodology: The 2D geometry, built in SpaceClaim, features a mixture of water and bubbles entering through a side wall with a lower outlet for purified water to exit, meshed in ANSYS Meshing with roughly 32,000 cells. Because the separation depends on the density difference between the two phases, the Volume of Fluid model tracks the air-water interface, with gravity applied in the Y direction to drive the buoyant separation; the flow is treated as laminar and solved as unsteady so the full development of the separation process can be captured over time.Analysis: The results follow the complete sequence: the trap starts filled with water, the incoming mixture introduces bubbles, and the lighter gas phase rises to escape through the top outlet while clean water leaves through the bottom, exactly matching the intended function of the device. A transient animation captures this separation as it unfolds, giving a clear picture of how effectively buoyancy-driven phase separation performs in a gas-liquid trap.

Three-Phase Flow Simulation in a Zigzag Channel Using ANSYS FluentIntroductionThis project simulates a three-phase flow mixture consisting of air, water, and kerosene within a square cross-section channel using ANSYS Fluent. The channel geometry includes a vertical section with two inlet openings at its top and bottom, connected to a zigzag horizontal section terminating in an outlet. In the initial state, only air occupies the channel; as the simulation proceeds, water enters through the upper inlet while kerosene enters through the lower inlet, allowing the three-phase interaction to develop over time.Geometry and MeshThe three-dimensional geometry was designed in Design Modeler, consisting of a vertical channel for fluid entry connected to a zigzag horizontal path formed by a series of perpendicular teeth-like segments. The channel cross-section is square with a side length of 0.0002 m, featuring two inlet sections at the top and bottom of the vertical portion and a single outlet at the end of the horizontal zigzag section. The domain was meshed using ANSYS Meshing with a structured mesh totaling 416,000 elements.MethodologyThe VOF multiphase model was used to capture the interaction between the three fluid phases. A porous zone with a porosity coefficient of 0.1 was defined within the channel to represent the flow resistance encountered along the path. Both inlet sections were assigned pressure-inlet boundary conditions with a relative pressure of 1000 Pa, while the single outlet was defined as a pressure outlet with a relative pressure of 0 Pa. The simulation was solved using a transient solver to track the volume fraction evolution of each phase over time, running for a total of 5 seconds with a time step of 0.1 seconds.Results and ConclusionTwo- and three-dimensional contours of pressure, velocity, and volume fraction for each of the water, air, and kerosene phases were obtained at the final second of the simulation. These results capture the progressive redistribution of the three phases as water and kerosene advance through the vertical and zigzag sections of the channel, illustrating how the porous zone and channel geometry jointly influence the multiphase flow development and phase distribution throughout the domain.

DescriptionThis project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate pigging oil flow inside a pipeline, a core operational process in gas and petrochemical pipeline engineering. A "pig" (Pipeline Inspection Gauge) is a device used inside pipelines for inspection, cleaning, and separating different fluid batches. Because a pig acts as an obstruction to flow, it introduces a pressure drop across its body — a key flow assurance concern this simulation investigates. The model examines fluid behavior around a stationary pig and the resulting pressure drop on either side, under two inlet oil velocities (0.9 m/s and 1.9 m/s).MethodologyThe 2D geometry, consisting of a pipeline with a simple pig inside it, is built in DesignModeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing using an unstructured grid of 5,789 elements. The simulation uses a pressure-based, transient solver, run for 90 seconds with a 0.03 second time step, with gravity neglected. Turbulence is modeled using the standard k-epsilon model with standard near-wall treatment. The VOF multiphase model defines two fluid phases — gas-oil and petro — using implicit formulation with sharp interface modeling to track the boundary between them.Boundary conditions specify a velocity inlet (0.9 or 1.9 m/s) with a petro volume fraction of 1 and gas-oil volume fraction of 0, a pressure outlet at 0 Pa gauge, and stationary walls for both the pipeline and pig surfaces. The solution uses the SIMPLE scheme for pressure-velocity coupling, PRESTO for pressure discretization, second-order upwind for momentum, a compressive scheme for volume fraction, and first-order upwind for turbulence quantities, with standard initialization at zero gauge pressure and zero petro volume fraction.ConclusionResults include 2D contours of pressure, velocity, and phase volume fraction for both inlet velocity cases, evaluated at the final second of simulation. These results characterize the pressure drop and flow disruption caused by the pig, directly informing pipeline pigging operations and pressure loss management in oil and gas transport systems.

DescriptionThis project simulates two-phase ejector flow using ANSYS Fluent, modeling liquid and vapor ammonia moving through a device that functions as a fluid-dynamic pump with no moving parts other than an inlet control valve. An ejector works by directing a high-pressure primary fluid through a nozzle so that its jet entrains a lower-pressure secondary fluid and carries it into a region of higher discharge pressure, the same principle behind steam ejectors that deliver water to a boiler using the boiler's own steam instead of a mechanical pump. In this case, liquid ammonia enters the primary inlet at 9 MPa and 393 K, and this high-pressure jet induces vapor ammonia to be drawn through and exit the ejector alongside the liquid. The geometry is designed and meshed in Gambit with a structured grid of 11,808 elements.MethodologyTurbulence is resolved with the realizable k-epsilon model and standard wall functions, and the energy equation is active to capture the thermal effects tied to the phase change and high operating pressure. The VOF multiphase model tracks the interface between ammonia vapor and ammonia liquid so their interaction can be resolved directly. The simulation is steady, uses a pressure-based solver, and neglects gravity. The outlet is a pressure outlet at 0 Pa gauge and 312 K, walls are stationary with zero heat flux except for a coupled wall segment, and the solution uses SIMPLE for pressure-velocity coupling, PRESTO! for pressure discretization, a compressive scheme for volume fraction, second-order upwind for momentum and energy, and first-order upwind for the turbulence quantities, with hybrid initialization.AnalysisThe results include contours of pressure, temperature, and velocity throughout the ejector. These fields characterize how the high-pressure primary ammonia jet entrains and accelerates the secondary vapor stream, and how the two phases interact as they move through the nozzle and mixing sections toward the discharge, the core behavior that determines an ejector's effectiveness as a passive pumping device in ammonia-handling process systems.