I'm analyzing a cylcone separator with air and solid particles.
I have problems with calculating and displaying the particle trajectories. It says in the result summary box that their 'fate' is "maximum time step". However, the 'residence time' for all 20 particles is between 1 and 2 seconds. I have specified the maximum time to 3600 seconds on the settings tab when i set up the particle study.
In help it says:
"Maximum time. Stops the particle's trajectory when the particle traveling time has reached the specified maximum value."
Why does it stop before it satisfies this criterium? Have I overlooked or misunderstood something?
Se attached for pictures of cyclone and dialog boxes.
Thanks!
Ideal reflection.
Attachments
Sorry about the confusion, but the image and the dialog boxes are not connected. The image is purely to show the geometry. The reason I also display the flow paths is that I want to hide some geometric features that my client wants to be confidential.
I have no trouble displaying the particle trajectories. The issue is that the trajectories terminate by some reason I cannot understand.
I asked my VAR about this issue, and they asked the development team which after a while replied the following:
"The 'maximum time step' is limited by the 'maximum iteration count' at 100 000. There is SPR 477646 to increase the user-defined 'maximum iteration count' to values greater than 100 000. The developers were not currently able to say in what version this setting will be increased. Unfortunately there is no workaround."
I.e. I know why this happens, but I can't really do anything about it.
Also, particles may 'get stuck' in vortices etc which is relevant for this case.
Hi Maria,
That's an interesting problem.
Would decreasing the mesh quality help? I'd assume that a coarser mesh would yield a lower iteration count. I know that's not the right way to solve the problem, but it would be interesting to know if it had an effect.
I am modeling a similar cyclone separator and did not run into the issue you had. The "max time steps" works as expected. I'm running SW 2011, SP0.0, so maybe the issue has been fixed. Here's a picture:
I ran into the same problem in one I just did a couple days ago in 2011 sp0. It went off to the developers as well.