Simcenter STAR-CCM+ CFD software

Multiphysics engineering simulation can accurately capture all the relevant physics that influence the performance of increasingly sophisticated products. Designed as a multiphysics CFD software, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ enables you to minimize the level of approximation and assumption. It provides a comprehensive, accurate, and efficient array of fluid dynamics-related multiphysics modeling capabilities.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides you with the confidence that the predicted performance of designs will match the real-world product. The modeling capabilities go beyond fluid flow and heat transfer and also include single and multiphase flows, particle dynamics, reactive flows, fluids-structure interaction, aeroacoustics, rheology and electrodynamics modeling.

Multiphysics CFD - fact sheet

Whether it's gases or liquids, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers a comprehensive set of CFD models for single-phase flows. From compressible to incompressible, from subsonic through supersonic to hypersonic, from laminar to turbulent flows.

For turbulent flows, aerodynamic and hydrodynamic engineers across industries can choose from a comprehensive state-of-the-art set of turbulence models, including all common Reynolds Average Navier Stokes (RANS) models, Detached Eddy Simulations (DES) and Large Eddy Simulations (LES).

Vehicle Aerodynamics - fact sheet

Aerospace Aerodynamics - fact sheet

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ enables you to simulate engineering problems that cover multiple flow regimes across stratified, dispersed, discrete, films, etc. To date, no single multiphase model can cover all regimes. So Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides a comprehensive range of models for multiphase computational fluid dynamics simulations. Use these together to cover many flow regimes, including the smart transitions between them. Leverage CFD software to predict the real-world behavior of your products by simulating multi-regime, multi-scale multiphase flows.

Multiphase flow - fact sheet

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers full particle-flow integration to maximize particle efficiency and distribution, minimize energy consumption, avoid excessive wear and abrasion, and optimize overall performance.

You can ensure material handling performance by accurately simulating realistic particle shapes with proper particle motion and contact. Unlike other CFD software tools, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers coupled flow and particulate physics within one single simulation environment, significantly reducing simulation set-up effort. Offering both mesh-based and mesh-free discrete element methods (DEM), engineers can choose the most suitable particle modeling approach.

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Simcenter STAR-CCM+ delivers a comprehensive suite of reacting flow and emission models covering a wide range of applications. It enables tight coupling between reacting flow models and heat transfer, radiation, multiphase reactions and surface chemistry. The wide breadth of reacting flow models helps you understand and optimize flame shape and location, minimize solid component temperatures, reduce emissions and maximize performance efficiency. Predict and understand flame dynamics, heat transfer, thermal wear, emissions, yield, conversion, selectivity and undesirable conditions with Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software.

Combustion - fact sheet

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to simulate heat transfer in a medium or between media accurately and efficiently. With conduction, convection, radiation, conjugate heat transfer, and boiling, the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers a full suite of heat transfer physics in one CFD software package to accurately predict temperature distributions in fluids and solids. Multi-time-scale technology and sophisticated fluid and solid meshing enable you to run complex CHT problems quickly, even with significantly different time scales in fluid dynamics and solid thermal dynamics.

Vehicle thermal management - fact sheet
Powertrain thermal management - fact sheet

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers an extensive library of accurate models for predicting aeroacoustics noise sources, including steady-state models, direct models (DES/LES), propagation models, and acoustic perturbation equations (APE) solver.

The CFD software supports hybrid aeroacoustic methods in which, at first, captures flow turbulences, which are translated into aeroacoustic sources to be plugged into a second acoustic (FEM) simulation model. The latter then predicts the acoustic propagation of these sources, including reflections and absorption in the environment. For example, the CFD software can predict side-mirror noise in a car.

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Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can handle both finite volume (FV) based computational fluid dynamics, and finite element (FE) based computational solid mechanics (CSM). This enables you to simulate fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in an easy-to-use single-integrated CFD software user interface. Using this approach, you can solve static, quasi-static, and dynamic problems, including those with nonlinear geometry and multiple parts using bonded and small sliding contacts.

Extending mechanical fluid-structure interaction, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ also offers efficient workflows for thermal stress analyses. You can solve heat transfer problems between a fluid and a structure, and then assess thermal stresses in the solid regions from within the CFD software.

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With the addition of computational rheology in Simcenter STAR-CCM+, engineers can simulate fluids dominated by diffusion and viscous or viscoelastic behavior.

Modeling these simulations is possible with the added finite element solver. This method is helpful to engineers in consumer products, waste processing, and food and beverage industries who work with mixers, flow containers, slurries, extrusions, and material processing. Accurately simulating rheology is the key to reducing power consumption, emissions, and raw material usage, while improving product reliability, user experience, and liability costs.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers a comprehensive suite of models, including solvers for free surface, partial fill, viscous energy, film casting, and short fiber.

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Simcenter STAR-CCM+ comes with a wide range of electromagnetic models to address a range of electromagnetics simulations, including magnetic valves, solenoids, actuators, and transformers to electric machines.

As a multiphysics CFD software suite, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers integrated electromagnetics capabilities that allow you to tightly couple to coolant flow, heat transfer and electromagnetics in one single simulation. The breadth of modeling capabilities also enables you to simulate magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) applications, including plasma arc simulation, gas-blast circuit breakers, and welding.​

Electromagnetics - fact sheet

To create a holistic digital twin, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is embedded into the wider Simcenter portfolio. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ enables you to couple its CFD software to other Simcenter simulation tools through dedicated interfaces and common data formats.

Couple to Simcenter 3D, Simcenter System simulations and others with ease. Create holistic multi-disciplinary simulations using different time scales ranging from microseconds to thousands of seconds, and physics ranging from sophisticated solid mechanics to rapid system simulations while leveraging the best-suited simulation technology for each discipline.

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Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to work directly with your CAD by robustly importing CAD or even driving your CAD tool interactively from your CFD software environment. Either way, your simulation stays true to your design in CAD, allowing you to get to simulation results quicker and more consistently without any untracked changes to your designs.

The CFD software gives you all the tools to easily generate, modify and clean up geometry to prepare for CFD simulation with industry-leading technology, including automatic defeaturing, manual surface repair, and automated surface wrapping.

Free up the time engineers spend on geometry preparation with powerful mesh operations.

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Benefit from fast, robust, repeatable, high-fidelity, automated meshing in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. Tackle any applications with the most appropriate meshing type, including:

• Tetrahedral
• Trimmed hexahedral
• Industry's first polyhedral
• Two-dimensional meshing
• Extruded meshes
• Directed mesh
• Prismatic layer
• Advancing layer
• Thin meshing technology

Easily combine multiple mesh types within the same simulation for maximum efficiency. Leverage powerful global, local, user-defined and automated mesh controls for maximum accuracy and efficiency. Model and solution-based adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) provides the precision you need at an affordable cost by letting the solution define the mesh.

Meshing - fact sheet

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Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers industry-leading moving mesh technology to make sophisticated motion simulation accessible in a few easy clicks. It brings complicated motion modeling capability to CFD engineers.

Within a single environment, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ empowers you to simulate not only a broad range of physics, but also a broad range of body and mesh motions to capture your physics accurately. With integrated motion models, you can simulate real-world performance of moving, overlapping objects with overset meshing, predict dynamic 6-DOF motion of bodies, understand multiphysics interactions to model performance 'as installed,' easily drive geometric changes for design exploration, easily predict rotating/translating machine behavior and define sophisticated motions to replicate machine operations in your CFD software accurately.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ brings the entire simulation process from CAD-to-solution-to-optimization into a single integrated platform. Based on high-fidelity geometry handling, robust automated meshing, efficient solving, and insightful postprocessing capabilities, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers everything needed for reliable and replayable workflows for computational fluid dynamics simulation automation.

With native embedded automation capabilities, you can create robust and reproducible workflows without writing a single line of automation code and from within your CFD software environment. For maximum flexibility, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers JAVA scripting capabilities. Record, adjust and replay JAVA-based macros and embed those into your larger automation ecosystem to automate even the most sophisticated CFD simulation tasks.

With this capability, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ enables you to run and explore 100s of designs in a single, integrated CFD software environment.

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Simcenter STAR-CCM+ offers a robust set of tools for efficient parametric design exploration: ensure confidence in CAD model robustness, automatically generate variants and expose different design variable combinations. To easily understand product behavior, utilize automated CFD simulation workflows to run sweeps of multiple parts and parameters to simulate multiple variants.

Find better designs in the shortest time/fewest runs and without being an optimization expert using the Intelligent Design Exploration add-on with the industry-leading SHERPA optimization algorithm. Understand the performance of your product as a function of one or more variables by design of experiment (DOE) runs. Realize the variation of outputs given small changes to the inputs using stochastic studies.

Design exploration - fact sheet

Fully integrated into Simcenter STAR-CCM+, adjoint-based topology optimization enables you to find new and efficient designs by making the flow designer.

To run an adjoint topology optimization in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ you need to start from the envelope where your design will be located and define in- and outlet boundaries. Integrated into the CFD software at no additional cost, the method will chisel away all the parts of your geometry that hinder the set cost-function characteristics, turning them into a solid and iteratively defining the shape that allows the optimal flow path.

The significant enhancements in additive manufacturing allow for almost uncompromised flow-optimized designs.

Topology optimization - fact sheet

With integrated CFD postprocessing capabilities, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows you to compare and communicate quantitative results with line plots, histograms, flexible monitors and customized reports. Seamlessly create visually appealing plots using an interactive environment. Leverage integrated data processing techniques like Fast Fourier transformations or correlation functions to gain deep insights into your computational fluid dynamics data. Use data focus techniques to interrogate interdependent data to measure and visualize product performance.

The Simcenter STAR-CCM+ CFD postprocessing functionality, tailored to design exploration studies, helps engineers find optimum solutions in complex design spaces, identify correlations between design characteristics and performance, and quickly exclude infeasible designs. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ can also evaluate trade-offs and analyze performance robustness against design variations. Multi-design visualization capabilities like scene linking make it easy to compare results across the same or different datasets inside the CFD software.

Data analytics - fact sheet

Let your CFD simulations make a lasting impact with cutting-edge ray-tracing technology. Create images and animations with realistic shadows, reflections and textures to improve comprehension for wider audiences and offer better visual cues for effective visualization. With Simcenter STAR-CCM+ you will benefit from built-in and customizable colormaps, multiple realistic lighting choices, volumetric data rendering and transparency options – which help you effectively communicate complex engineering data.

Bring your models to life and communicate simulation results easily to non-expert stakeholders using powerful yet easy-to-use animation techniques fully embedded into your CFD software tool.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ opens the door to innovation, allowing you to interact directly with your simulations – in a human way – using virtual reality (VR) headsets. This allows you to quantitatively interrogate data fields, sweep through plane sections, generate isosurfaces of critical quantities or create streamlines to visualize the flow. Explore your CFD results together in a collaborative environment, leading viewers – even those spread across the globe – into your simulation results to convey or jointly find key engineering insights, and elevate CFD postprocessing to a new level.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ employs a simple-to-understand and highly flexible licensing model. A single license unlocks all core pre/post/multiphysics capabilities, options for HPC and cloud usage, and options for design exploration and optimization. When your HPC resources grow, you want a license that grows alongside it, with no barriers. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ provides a flexible and scalable licensing model that lets you employ unlimited computing resources.

Power licensing - fact sheet

Simcenter X

CFD simulations accelerated with graphics processing units (GPU) continuously offer significant calculation speedups, energy, and cost savings. By leveraging GPU-enabled solver acceleration in Simcenter STAR-CCM+, you can run resource-intensive, high-fidelity simulations like large eddy simulations (LES) or aeroacoustics overnight. This enables you to model the complexity of today's products while going faster in a cost and energy-efficient way.

Thanks to a direct porting of existing CPU solver technology to GPUs, we ensure you will obtain consistent results between GPU and CPU-based calculations. This allows you to seamlessly switch between CPU and GPU-based calculations to choose the most suitable hardware solution for your CFD simulation.

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Simcenter X gives you instant access to optimized Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, configured and managed by Siemens without any additional set-up. This enables you to run CFD simulations on the cloud using Simcenter STAR-CCM+ with increased flexibility and scalability, with on-demand access and unlimited capacity. Plus, you can run your simulations on the cloud without restrictions – no need to set up and access the cloud using 3rd party providers or any time investments, nor do you need expertise in cloud and HPC technologies.

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