Flotherm or Cosmos flow work ?

[raja237]

Hello everybody,

I'm new here i'm thermal engineer and i use to work with the software FLOTHERM in order to characterize Heat Sink or Cold Plate.
But Solid Work offer a Cosmos Flow which have the same functionality that Flotherm, indeed :
Cosmos FLow use Finite Volume
COsmos FLow work use rectangular meshes
COsmos FLow work use k epsilon turbulence model for simulate an turbulence flow.

So my question is : which is the better, i mean the more accurate and easy to use ? Flotherm or Cosmos FLow

Anybody have already use COsmos FLow for characterize heat sink or cold plate ?

COsmos flow user advices are welcome

In advance i thank u for ur respond.

 

[IRstuff]

You should probably Red Flag (RF) this post and re-post in the COSMOS forum.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[mechengdude]

I have used COSMOS FloWorks and attended their 3 day training course. I have never used FLOTHERM.

I am an ME with a fairly good background in traditional FEA. COSMOS Floworks is my first experience using a CFD program. I would classify it as fairly easy to use. It is well integrated in SolidWorks which allows for easy geometry manipulation.

I can not specifically speak to the accuracy of the code although my results have compared fairly good to test data when simulating fan cooling of electronics.

 

[raja237]

Thank you fo your respond mecha eng dude, the bounday conditions are easy to use? with COSMOS Floworks? what about the meshes ?

 

[mechengdude]

Yes the boundary conditions in FloWorks are fairly easy to set up although they are quite a bit more complicated than doing a traditional static FEA. With the CFD there are so many more variables and inputs to consider for example gravity direction which to me did not intuitively seem like it would matter in a CFD analysis can have a significant affect in convection heating due to the change in air density. Anyway, I don't think that is a function of FLoWorks, it’s related to the fact that a CFD analysis is more complicated than a static FEA.

As far as meshing goes it is fairly easy as well. The meshes are automatically generated in FloWorks. You have some control over mesh density.

I assume you have SolidWorks already, correct? We had our VAR give us a 30 day trail licenses of FloWorks to try it out before we made the purchase. This worked out well.

Good luck.

P.S. I tried to attach a screen shot of the mesh dialog box as well as a model showing a cut-plot and a fluid trajectory plot combined.