In the Particle module, the trajectory of a particle’s movement through a continuous fluid flow is tracked by solving the equations of motion for the particle (derived from force balance) in a Lagrange system. For the discrete particle model, the underlying physical mechanism is that between the continuous fluid phase and the particles, there are relative motions and thus momentum exchanges. Consequently, the particle tracking, often coupled with flow simulations, is essentially a transient process. This is because the velocity and position of each particle depends on its initial conditions and the local flow field where the particle travels at a given time.

For many flow simulations, particularly for steady-state runs, you display or visualize the flow paths or streamlines. Streamlines are a family of curves that are tangent to the velocity vector of the flow. To create flow streamlines, visualize massless particles, whose size (radius) and numbers do not influence the flow, that are released from boundaries and they travel along with the fluid flow. With the massless particles sharing the flow velocity, you can determine the flow streamlines by tracking the massless particle motions in the flow domains since the trajectories of the particles are always identical to the flow paths.

Streamline is a module in Creo Flow Analysis to create streamlines primarily for the postprocessing of steady-state flow simulations. For transient simulations, you can display particles as an alternative to streamlines. To access this module, follow the steps listed below:

See below for a description of items in the Streamline module: