TIPS & TRICKS USING THE 6 DOF MODEL

An ice cube makes our drinks so much more refreshing but have you ever
wondered if the ice cube will touch the bottom of your glass as it falls in. Being
able to model a solid falling into a fluid would benefit many industrial applications.
This section shows you how to perform such a simulation.

To simulate the ice cube falling into our drink, we need to use the 6 DOF model available
in FLUENT.

First, let’s have look at the model. We have our glass filled with orange juice (the yellow
domain in figure 1); air is on top of it (not shown in the figure), and an ice cube (light
blue) is ready to fall into the juice. Now use the 6 DOF model of FLUENT to study the
displacement of the ice cube.

Figure1: Glass with juice and ice cube ready to fall

To put this model in place, we need to define:

• Parameters for the dynamic mesh
• Parameters for the remeshing
Ice geometrical modeling
As shown in figure 1, the ice cube seems to be represented as a perfect cube. In fact, we
have to define a fluid zone surrounding the ice cube, the green sphere as illustrated in
figure 2, which will follow the cube movements. The volume representing the ice cube is
in reality empty. The entity called “ice cube” is in fact just the wall boundary
representation of the ice cube, as shown in figure 2 (black). The fluid part called “air-ice-
cube” is the air close to the ice cube, shown in green in figure 2.

Figure 2: Ice cube (black) and air ice cube (green) surrounding it
Problem Set-up
The first steps require defining the parameters for the dynamic mesh, enabling the
dynamic mesh together with the 6 DOF solver.
The evolution of the mesh involves two methods, smoothing and remeshing. Both
methods will update the original mesh during the computation.
• Smoothing will activate the spring based smoothing method. This technique
updates the mesh that is moving during the fall of the ice cube. No remeshing is
taking place.
• The remeshing technique is used when the mesh deformation are too large
leading to bad cells quality after the mesh smoothing. The domain is then locally
remeshed, ensuring a good mesh quality even with large displacements.
Figure 3, 4, 5 and 6 show the different parameters you must define in each of the panels.
The Smoothing Panel

Figure 3: smoothing parameters for dynamic mesh.

The spring constant factor has been lowered to 0.5 in the smoothing panel. This constant
controls the spring stiffness. A value of 0 indicates that there is no damping on the
springs; the boundary node displacements have more influence on the motion of the
interior nodes. A value of 1 imposes the default level of damping on the interior node
displacements.

Figure 4: effects of the spring coefficient on remeshing. A spring coefficient of 1 is

applied on the right, while a spring coefficient of 0 is applied on the left figue.
The Remeshing Panel

Figure 5: remeshing parameters for dynamic mesh

In the remeshing panel, we just impose the skewness of the cells and the faces. The
maximum cell skewness is lowered to 0.75 and the minimum face skewness to 0.7. These
two values are chosen in order to ensure a good mesh quality. The size remeshing interval
is kept to its default value of 10. Putting a value of 0 for the minimum and maximum
length scale means that all cells are marked for remeshing. The remeshing takes place
every 10 time steps. Note that the marking of cells takes place every time step.

In the 6 DOF solver, the gravity is defined only in the Y direction as the ice cube has to
fall in that direction.

Figure 6: 6DOF parameters for dynamic mesh.

Zone specifications
Next, the zone for the dynamic mesh should be defined. Two zones will be specified:
- air ice cube
- ice-cube.
The different values of the parameters are described in figure 7. They are the same for
both zones. The only difference is that air-ice cube is defined as passive for the 6 DOF
solver when ice cube is active. Turning on the passive option means that the force and
moments for “air-ice-cube” are not taken into account.

Figure 7: Dynamic zone panel.

The center of gravity location is the initial location of the ice-cube center of gravity. The
velocities are zero as the ice cube has no velocity initially.

Making the ice a real solid

The UDF used in the 6 DOF UDF defines the mass and the inertia moments for the ice
cube. This simple udf is shown below. Note that the units are the SI units. The ice cube
has a weight of 0.9 g. Although the ice cube is just represented as walls, the parameters
defined in this UDF give to the ice cube its solid properties.

DEFINE_SDOF_PROPERTIES(test_box, prop, dt, time, dtime)

{
prop[SDOF_MASS] = 0.0009;
prop[SDOF_IXX] = 0.66e-7;
prop[SDOF_IYY] = 0.66e-7;
prop[SDOF_IZZ] = 0.66e-7;
printf ("\n2d_test_box: Updated 6DOF properties");
}

Now, you simply initialize your computation and make sure to have a nice juice waiting
for the run to end!

Figure 8: A nice fresh orange juice is just waiting for you!