Introduction

 

This manual describes the use of the interface program between PHOENICS Version 1.5 to 2.1 and the FEMVIEW module of FEMGV. The advantages of viewing the PHOENICS model and results using the swift interactive response of the FEMVIEW program will soon become apparent.

FEMVIEW is primarily a program for displaying the results of finite element analyses, and the language of the program reflects this fact. Because of this some of the terminology of this manual may be unfamiliar to PHOENICS users. In FEMVIEW a `grid' is referred to as a `mesh', and `cells' are referred to as 'elements'. The cell corners become FEMVIEW `nodes'. Nodes and elements are numbered sequentially, starting at 1, and these numbers are generated by the interface. The equation used to generate element numbers is given in Chapter 3. However, as the I, J, K definition of a grid is available within FEMVIEW, it is unlikely that the user will often want to access the grid in terms of node and element numbers, but will prefer to use I, J, K values instead.

The interface reads results data from the PHOENICS `PHI' results file or the multiblock NEP file. Coordinate data is either read from the PHOENICS `XYZ' file, or it is calculated from the information in the `PHI' file. The interface is able to transfer data from either the ASCII PHI and XYZ files or the binary PHIDA and XYZDA files. The ASCII file option allows data to be transferred between computers of different types.

When translating multiblock models the PHOENICS NEP system is used. This enables multiblock results to be transferred via a neutral file (the NEP file) or using the PHOENICS PHI, XYZ and PATGEO files and the PHOENICS NEP libraries. If the libraries are available on the same computer as the interface the latter route will always be the faster option.

The interface allows the data to be made available to FEMVIEW by writing data directly to the FEMVIEW database. The speed advantage gained by this direct transfer is such that the FEMVIEW Neutral file option has been withdrawn as a means of transferring the geometric data of the model.

Data from the PHOENICS files may be used to create a new FEMVIEW model or, if a number of runs have been performed on the same geometry, results can be appended to an existing model. Details of how results are converted to the FEMVIEW format are given in section 3.5.