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Query regarding open cell metal foams

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Prerana C Inguva

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Jan 6, 2025, 10:06:37 AMJan 6
to dream3d-users
Greetings!
I am trying to simulate 3D CAD models of open cell metal foams with various porosities. 
I would like to know whether it is possible to not just create the microstructure but the complete geometry using Dream3D so that I can further import this geometry to run CFD in ANSYS. 

If yes, can I proceed with the existing example given in the software?

Thanks in advance!

Prerana C Inguva

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Jan 6, 2025, 10:49:17 AMJan 6
to dream3...@googlegroups.com, Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

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Jan 6, 2025, 11:10:01 AMJan 6
to Prerana C Inguva, dream3d-users
Short answer: Quite Possibly.

Longer Answer: It depends on the size of your model and the resolution that you want for the model that will be imported into Ansys.

For instance if you want a model that has a volume of 1000 x 1000 x 1000 voxels (hexahedrons) then that will take about:

4GB for the feature Ids
4GB for the phase ids

If you want Euler Angle then that adds another 12GB. If you want IPF Colors, that adds another 4GB of data. 

Also DREAM3D will need to convert your STL model into a vowelized grid and the algorithm to do this inside of DREAM.3D is pretty slow for large voxel grids (like the one that I am talking about above. We are fixing this in an upcoming DREAM3D-NX but unfortunately this is not being back-ported to DREAM.3D.

I would need to know more information about your model and the voxel resolution that you want before I can say much more.

--
Mike Jackson                    mike.j...@bluequartz.net
BlueQuartz Software         www.bluequartz.net
President/Owner               Dayton, Ohio
Principal DREAM.3D Developer


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Prerana C Inguva

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Jan 6, 2025, 11:16:28 AMJan 6
to Michael Jackson, dream3d-users
Thanks for the clarification Micheal!

Geometrically, my models are cylinders with 1 cm and 2 cm diameters and 8 cm height. 

The major constraint I am facing with various modeling softwares is the complexity in generating random voronoi structures to replicate the open cell metal foams and even if I do, the file sizes are too big to run CFD simulations in ANSYS.

Wondering if using Dream3D can solve this problem?

Thanks
Prerana
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Prerana C Inguva
PhD Student
Advanced Materials Research Laboratory
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
NC State University

Michael Jackson

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Jan 6, 2025, 3:10:45 PMJan 6
to Prerana C Inguva, dream3d-users
Hello, 
    Again, this all depends on the resolution of the grains that you are willing to live with.  The physical size of the model does not really matter. Let me explain a bit.


If your cylinders are 1cm in diameter and 8 cm in height that could be modeled with a voxel grid that is simply 1 voxel in the X and Y axis and 8 in the Z Axis. But clearly this would not really make sense to get any good data but does give us a starting point. 

Let us now increase this size of the voxel grid by 10 in each direction: 10 x 10 x 80. That is 8000 voxels. Getting better but probably still not nearly enough fidelity in the model to show the open cell foam with much detail.

Let us now increase another 10x: 100 x 100 x 800. That is 8 million voxels. Still just fine on memory but maybe starting to get up there for Ansys Desktop. But now we can start talking about how well represented the foam would be. That puts the spacing at 0.1 mm (100 microns) per voxel. As a rule of thumb you would probably want about 5 voxels across the diameter of a foam “ligament” which means your foam ligaments need to be 500 microns in diameter. I have no idea if this meets your expectations or not.

If you are trying to model something like a 1 micron ligament diameter then you will either need to go to a super computer that runs Ansys or cut down the physical size of your model.

I am also assuming that Ansys is going to import the model as a hexahedron mesh. You could create a triangular surface mesh with DREAM.3D and then have Ansys generate a volume mesh from that but not sure I would recommend that path.

Hop this helps you figure out how to model your foam. 

--
Mike Jackson                    mike.j...@bluequartz.net
BlueQuartz Software         www.bluequartz.net
President/Owner               Dayton, Ohio
Principal DREAM.3D Developer


Prerana C Inguva

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Jan 6, 2025, 3:33:37 PMJan 6
to Michael Jackson, dream3d-users
Thank you very much for your reply Micheal!

This gives a clarity to my situation. 
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