Learning Forum

[Ruli]

Hello community,

I need to perform specific wind simulations, but I have never touched a CFD software before. The scenario is, there is a part of a city, several buildings and I need to simulate the wind in this area, generally if it blows from different directions. I do not need to get the pressure on buildings, we are not interested in that. I need to get the wind velocity at any given point in the simulated area - e.g. we need to know the wind direction and speed at a given coordinates in 3D in a fixed point of time. We need to export the simulation to be able to load it in python (preferably) or MATLAB. So far I made a short research about CFD software and we most likely will use ANSYS Fluent. However, I can not find if it is possible to achieve what we need.

Thus my question is - is it possible to save the CFD simulation results of wind into a representation allowing later queries by X, Y and Z coordinates in order to get the wind speed and direction in python/MATLAB? It might be enough to get this data at discrete altitudes - on a given scale for example each 1 meter.

I am sorry for asking such a vague question, but before installing/purchasing a new software and learning its basics we need to be sure that it is possible to achieve what we need.

[Rob]

It is possible, and is fairly easy to do once you have the results. Are you doing this as a student project or as a commercial entity?

[Ruli]

It is part of my PhD research.

[Rob]

OK, you'll most likely need a Research licence given the domain size and purpose of the simulation. The University may already have these: I can't see (and don't want to know) where you are.
Under File menu look at the various export options. You can export data in several formats which are human readable and contain x, y, z coordinates and field data (eg velocity magnitude or x, y & z components).