First course in CFD simulations using ANSYS CFD

Name: First course in CFD simulations using ANSYS CFD
Rating: 4.3 (105 reviews)

A first course in learning everything in CFD from scratch without any prior knowledge of simulation

Created bySijal Ahmed

Last updated 10/2025

English

What you'll learn

Learn CFD simulation from scratch in ANSYS workbench environment
Clean geometry and create domain in ANSYS Spacelcaim
Create highly quality mesh in Workbench meshing
Quickly run CFD simulation in Fluent for full aircraft
To setup compressible flow problem and accelerating solution convergence for density based solver in Fluent
Quickly modify geometry of full Aircraft by providing 8 deg AoA using move command
Updating mesh and solution in single click
Analyze CFD results in Fluent post processing tools and getting contour plot, vector plots, path lines, Cp plot etc.

Course content

1 section • 5 lectures • 1h 33m total length

Introduction and geometry and domain generation in ANSYS Spaceclaim16:05
Learn to perform CFD analysis of complex geometry using SpaceClaim and ANSYS Workbench, cleaning the model, creating a single enclosure, and building a half-model with defined inlet and outlet.
Creating high quality mesh of full aircraft in ANSYS meshing32:22
Learn to build a high-quality aircraft mesh in ANSYS Workbench, using edge, face, and body-of-influence sizing, targeted refinement around the fuselage, pylons, and wake, with inflation layers for fluent readiness.
Running simulation of full Aircraft at zero AoA25:53
Scale geometry to match a 71-meter Boeing 747 length, update the mesh, set up a compressible flow simulation in Fluent with density-based properties, and compute drag and lift coefficients.
Modifying AoA , creating mesh and again running simulation in Fluent17:15
Modify the angle of attack by rotating the aircraft geometry in SpaceClaim, update the mesh, and run a quick Fluent simulation, then compare lift and drag.
How to use course material2:15
Identify and use course materials by opening workbench and space claim files, downloading and zipping associated geometry, mesh, and fluent files for ANSYS CFD simulation.

Requirements

You will learn every thing from scratch. So no prior knowledge of CFD is needed for this course.
ANSYS 2022 R1 (professional) installed on your computer for using files given with course.
You would also need a decent computer with i5 or i7 processor and atleast 8-16 GB RAM

Description

In this course you will learn your first CFD simulation from scratch. We will use Boeing 747-400 simplified model to learn important CFD modules in ANSYS workbench.
We will use ANSYS Spaceclaim for geometry cleaning and creating domain for full Aircraft (Boeing 747-400). We will also crate body that will be used as body of influence (BOI) for mesh refinement in wake region.

After that using same geometry and domain, we will cerate hybrid mesh in Workbench Grid generation app. We will create prism layers for capturing boundary layer flow features which are very important for aerodynamic flows such in our case. We will also refine mesh in wake using body of influence (BOI).

This mesh will be then used for setting up compressible flow simulation in ANSYS Fluent. You will provide proper scaling factor, choosing appropriate turbulence model, enabling energy equation, using ideal gas las for density, defining boundary conditions specially at inlet in terms of Mach number, defining reference condition including reference area and reference length. You will also setup defining report definitions for monitoring drag and lift coefficients. Solution will be initialized using hybrid method. We will also setup solver so that we can accelerate solution convergence using "solution steering" option in Fluent. Finally we will hit the calculate option to solve CFD simulation using iterative solver schemes available in ANSYS Fluent.

Once solution is converged based on plots of Cd and CL then we will analyze the flow field including Cp plot, vectors plots, contours plots for pressure and Mach number. We will also draw path lines to see how flow is interacting with Aircraft body. Finally we will find out drag and lift coefficients.

Once more interesting part of this course is that, you will also modify the geometry of whole aircraft by providing angle of attack of 8 deg to full model. You will quickly update the mesh using settings for the pervious case with zero angle of attack (AoA), and run simulation in Fluent. We will again solve the problem in Fluent and discuss the differences in results as comparison to case with zero AoA.

Who this course is for:

Course is intended to students who are just starting to learn their first CFD simulation.