EDEM-Fluent Coupling with Combustion
Requirements
As with all previous versions of the coupling, you will require a licensed version of Altair EDEM, Ansys Fluent and Microsoft Visual
Studio. In particular you will require:
1. EDEM 2021.2 or later
2. Fluent 2021 R1 or later
The coupling is not backwards compatible with earlier versions.
Compiling the Coupling
The coupling is compiled in the same manner as previous EDEM-Fluent couplings, using the provided compilation tool. See document
EDEM Fluent Coupling Compilation Window.pdf (or EDEM Fluent Coupling Compilation Linux.pdf) for further details on how to use
the tool and load the coupling into Fluent, if you are not familiar with this process.
Using the Coupling
The user is already expected to be familiar with both EDEM and Fluent. Having knowledge of the standard EDEM-Fluent coupling is
highly recommended. Further, the user is also expected to know how to use Fluent’s combustion modelling capabilities with the DPM,
as these steps are not covered in this guide. If you are not familiar with setting up combustion problems in Fluent, it is recommended
that you go through the appropriate Fluent training materials first.
Step 1: Set up the EDEM Model
In terms of setting up the EDEM model, there are no extra considerations over a regular EDEM-Fluent coupled case. Set up your
model as you wish, ensuring that you set up a material and particle for the combusting material.
Once you have finished setting up the EDEM model, start the coupling server.
Step 2: Set up the Fluent Model
The Fluent set up requires slightly more consideration, when compared to a regular EDEM-Fluent coupled case.
For a regular case, once EDEM is connected to Fluent, a DPM injection is automatically created with the name edem-injection.
This is a name that, by default, the coupling understands is to be used to communicate particle information between EDEM and
Fluent. When modelling combustion, however, the user should instead set up the DPM injection as they would for a standalone Fluent
combustion case. In doing so, a DPM injection is created automatically by Fluent, initially with the name of injection-0 (assuming
no others have been created previously). Once this combusting particle injection is defined, it is recommended that the solution is
run for a few timesteps without the coupling connected, to confirm that the model is setup correctly.
The coupling needs to be informed that this is the injection used to pass data between EDEM and Fluent, and not the default edem-
injection. To do this, once the combustion injection has been set up, you need to enter the following into Fluent’s console:
(rpsetvar 'edem/injection-name "injection-0")
You can check the injection name the coupling is going to use with:
(rpgetvar 'edem/injection-name)
You can also choose to rename the default injection-0 to edem-injection, which is the injection name the coupling is set up
to use by default.
If you need to set up the coupling for multiple particle types, the injections should all use the same ‘base’ name, with the particle type
added on the end. For example, if your particle types were named particle1 and particle2 in EDEM, your injections in Fluent
should be edem-injection-particle1 and edem-injection-particle2.
Step 3: Run the Simulation
Once your combustion injections are set up and named, you can connect the coupling as normal and start the simulation from Fluent.
A suitable timestep, for either EDEM or Fluent, is always case dependent. For the standard EDEM-Fluent coupling, using a ratio of
1 Fluent timestep : 100 EDEM timesteps is usually sufficient, where the EDEM timestep is determined using ~20-40% of the Rayleigh
