Various Boundary Conditions (BCs) available in ANSYS Fluent

1. Pressure-inlet BC: Used to define the fluid pressure at flow inlets, along
with all other scalar properties of flow. Suitable for both incompressible
and compressible flow conditions.
Incompressible fluid: p0=ps+0.5v2
1)/2) M2)/(-1)

Compressible fluid: p0=ps (1+ ((-

2. Velocity-inlet BC: Used to define the flow velocity. Along with all relevant
scalar properties of the flow, at flow inlets. Equally applicable to both
incompressible and compressible flow conditions.
Mass flow rate =

v .dA

Only the normal component of velocity to the control volume face

contributes to inlet mass flow rate
3. Mass flow inlet BC: When mass flow BC is used for an inlet zone, the
normal velocity component is estimated for each face in the zone, which is
used to compute the fluxes of all relevant solution variables into the
domain.
vn= mass flow rate/Area
4. Inlet vent BC: Used to model an inlet vent with a specified loss coefficient,
flow direction, ambient inlet pressure and temperature
An inlet vent is considered to be infinitely thin, and the pressure drop
through the vent is assumed to be proportional to the dynamic head of the
fluid, with an empirically determined loss coefficient. That is, the pressure
drop, p, varies with the normal component of velocity through the vent,
v, as follows:
p=kL0.5v2, where kL is non-dimensional loss coefficient.
5. Intake fan BC: Used to model an external intake fan with a specified
pressure jump, flow direction, and ambient (intake) pressure and
temperature.
An intake fan is considered to be infinitely thin, and the discontinuous
pressure rise across it is specified as a function of the velocity through the
fan. In the case of reversed flow, the fan is treated like an outlet vent with
a loss coefficient of unity.
Pressure jump across the fan can be defined as a constant, polynomial,
piecewise-linear or piecewise-polynomial function of the normal velocity.
6. Pressure outlet BC: Requires the specification of gauge pressure at the
outlet boundary.
In addition to this, also a target mass flow rate option is in-built which
can be used in combination with the Pressure-outlet BC. The simple

Bernoulli equation is used to adjust the pressure at every iteration on a

pressure outlet zone in order to meet the desired mass flow rate. The
change in pressure, based on Bernoullis equation is given by the following
equation:
dP=0.5ave(m2-mreq2)/(aveA)2, where
m is the current computed mass flow rate at the pressure-outlet boundary
and mreq is the required mass flow rate.
7. Pressure far-field BC: Used to model a free-stream condition at infinity,
with free-stream Mach number and static conditions being specified
(gauge pressure)
8. Outflow BC: Used to model the exits where the details of flow velocity and
pressure are not known prior to solving the problem. No conditions are
defined at the outflow boundaries. ANSYS Fluent extrapolates the required
information from the interior.
9. Exhaust fan BC: Used to model an external exhaust fan with a specified
pressure jump (increase in pressure) and ambient(discharge) pressure.
10.Degassing BC: Used to model a free surface through which dispersed gas
bubbles are allowed to escape, but the continuous phase is not. Available
only for two-phase liquid-gas flows using the Eulerian multiphase model.
11.Wall BC: Used to bound fluid and solid regions. No-slip/specified
shear/moving
wall/stationary
wall/wall
roughness/specularity
coefficient/Marangoni stress are the different in-built options.
12.Symmetry BC: Used when the physical geometry of interest and the
expected pattern of the flow/thermal solution, have mirror symmetry
13.Periodic BC: Used when the physical geometry of interest and the
expected pattern of the flow/thermal solution have a periodically repeating
nature. Two types of periodic BCs are available in ANSYS Fluent- first type
does not allow a pressure drop across the periodic planes (cyclic
boundary). The second type allows a pressure drop to occur across
translationally periodic boundaries, enabling the user to model fullydeveloped periodic flow.
14.Axis BC: Axis type boundary must be used as the centreline of an
axisymmetric geometry. There is no need to define any boundary
condition at axis boundary.
15.Fan BC: The fan BC allows the user to input an empirical fan curve that
governs the relationship between head (pressure rise) and flow rate
(velocity) across a fan element. Radial and tangential velocities of the fan
swirl velocity can also be specified. The fan model does not provide an
accurate description of flow through the fan blades. Instead, it predicts the
amount of flow through the fan.

Example: p=fnvn-1, p is the pressure jump, f n are the pressure-jump

polynomial coefficients and v is the magnitude of local velocity of fluid
normal to the fan.
16.Radiator BC: A lumped-parameter model for a heat exchange element (for
example, a radiator or condenser). This BC allows the user to specify both
the pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient as functions of the velocity
normal to the radiator.
Pressure drop through a radiator varies with the normal component of
velocity through the radiator as
p=kL0.5v2, where kL is the non-dimensional loss coefficient, which can
be specified as a constant/polynomial.
Heat transfer through can be modelled by considering the heat balance
equation:
Q=mcpT/A=h(Tair,d-Text)
m is the fluid mass flow rate, T ext is external temperature (reference
temperature for the liquid), Tair,d is the temperature downstream from the
heat exchanger.
17.Porous Jump BC: Used to model a thin membrane that has known
velocity (pressure drop) characteristics. Uses include examples such as
modelling pressure drops through screens and filters, and modelling
radiators when you are not concerned with heat transfer.
The thin porous medium has a finite thickness over which the pressure
change is defined as a combination of Darcys law and an additional
inertial loss term:
p=-((v/)+C20.5v2)m
where is the laminar fluid viscosity, is the permeability of the medium,
C2 is the pressure-jump coefficient, v is the velocity normal to the porous
face, and m is the thickness of the medium.
In case a new type of Boundary condition is necessary, Userdefined functions (UDFs) and Profiles can be used to define the
boundary conditions based on experimental data or other sources