Exploring results
Once complete, your simulation data is available on your project homepage (under completed runs), via an interactive webpage, a printable PDF report, an Excel spreadsheet & as raw VTK data (for local/custom post-processing).
Completed Runs
All of the finished runs in a project are listed in the “Completed Runs” tab (see below). Here you can view, sort & filter your results by a number of metrics including forces, moments, date, quality & yaw angle.
This table offers a convenient way to compare the “headlines” from your simulations without having to click through to each one in turn.
Interactive webpage
Each simulation has its own interactive webpage where you can explore and analyse its results in detail.
1: The table panel
This panel shows the total forces acting on your model at each yaw angle (including presentation in coefficient form) and the moments about the model origin.
The yaw angle toggle (immediately below the table panel) can be used to select which yaw angle is shown in the subsequent panels.
2: The force distribution panel
This panel plots the distribution of forces across your model. The technique effectively slices your model into a number of segments & reports the forces acting on those segments.
Use the dropdown menu to switch the chart between lift, drag & side force in the X, Y & Z directions & show the force acting on each of the model segments.
You can also choose to show cumulative lift, drag & side force distributions, where the forces are summed along the model, in the X-direction.
The cumulative force plots are particularly useful for quickly identifying where force changes occur along the length of your model.
3: The 3D-view
This panel loads an interactive 3D model which can rotated & zoomed to get the perfect view of your model surfaces.
Models are loaded on request (to speed up page load) click to activate this panel.
By default your model will be coloured by surface pressure, but you can also choose to colour by friction (wall shear stress) or by drag pressure - click on the controls panel & use the model dropdown menu to make your selection.
You can use the control panel to toggle pressure contours (isosurfaces which illustrate the shape of the wake around your model) and streamlines. The orientation & position of the streamlines can be changed interactively using their own dropdown & slider bar.
If your model contains multiple parts then you can optionally hide individual parts from view. Hover your mouse over the part you want to hide & right-click to bring up the option.
Right-click anywhere in the window to bring up the option to show all of your parts again.
The 3D view panel can also be expanded to fullscreen using the buttons on the right-hand side of an active panel (excellent for detailed screenshots).
Click the “?” for a short tour of the 3D view.
4: The slice viewer
The slice viewer give you an insight into what is going on in the flow around your model using planar slices which can be swept along the primary axes.
You can choose to view slices coloured by total pressure coefficient or by acoustic power, with & without the 3D model visible.
You also have the option to view the total pressure slices with LIC pathlines (a technique similar to oilflow or streamlines, which reveals the in-plane flow structures that are present in your data).
Slices are available in X,Y & Z directions & are moved using the slider at the bottom of the panel.
The slice viewer panel can be expanded using the button in its top right corner (excellent for checking out the detail in the LIC data).
5: The parts panel
This bar chart shows the forces and moments acting on each individual part of your model.
Hover your mouse pointer over the bars to see the numeric value for each part.
Use the dropdown menu to select the component of interest, where:
- $F_d$ = Drag Force (Force in the X-Direction)
- $F_s$ = Side Force (Force in the Y-Direction)
- $F_l$ = Lift Force (Force in the Z-Direction)
- $M_r$ = Roll Moment (Moment about the X-Axis)
- $M_p$ = Pitch Moment (Moment about the Y-Axis)
- $M_y$ = Yaw Moment (Moment about the Z-Axis)
Printable PDF Report
A printable report (in PDF-format) can be downloaded from the main results web page.
This report contains additional information (not shown on the web page) including simulation-specific settings, plus definitions and explanation of the result parameters.
It also includes a detailed summary of your simulation data via a wide selection of plots, tables and charts.
Example report
Download an example report here.
Excel Spreadsheet
Numerical data (e.g. forces and moments) are available in a single .xlsx spreadsheet format.
The spreadsheet includes data for each of your model parts, at each yaw angle & can be used as a record or to construct your own comparison tables.
The spreadsheet also includes data for the force distributions, should you wish to plot your own charts.
The spreadsheet can be downloaded via the dropdown menu at the top of your simulation webpage.
Raw Data
The raw CFD data can be downloaded to your local machine where you can perform your own custom post-processing, analysis and visualization.
The data is provided in VTK format, which can be read using the free, open-source visualisation tool, ParaView (& many other tools).
Access the raw data download link via the dropdown menu at the top of your simulation results page.
The raw data files are large (10GB+ for Pro simulations) & are therefore only available for a limited time (60 days) after the simulation is finished.
More details about our simulation data expiration policy can be found here.