Sensitivity analysis of CFD method with modeFRONTIER

Abstract

Prediction of physical phenomena is increasingly demanded by industry. Saving time and cost is the main goal of this approach. Empirical tests are costly and also time consuming; furthermore, rapidly rising costs severely limit freedom in design modification in empirical testing. At the Contamination and CFD section at Volvo cars, several numerical methods are carried out on a daily basis. There was a demand to investigate robustness of mentioned methods. Robustness in the sense that how much by applying new design factor such as boundary conditions, geometries or turbulence models, their specified response will be affected and in what manner. Variation of design factor could have a different effect on a response, so that having estimation about the result is valuable. Design of experiment and statistical analysis can be used as a systematic procedure to illustrate the uncertainty of method. In this thesis integration of ANSYS/FLUENT® as a main engineering simulation tool and modeFRONTIER® as a multi-objective and multi-disciplinary platform and MATLAB® as a high-level programing language is performed. The core knowledge of performing such a process is obtained, advantages and drawbacks of the procedure is studied. Such an integrated process is applicable in other disciplines as well.