Overview

Fluent is the industry-leading fluid simulation software used to predict fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, chemical reactions and other related phenomena.

Usage

NCI installs fluent as part of the ANSYS package, load the ansys module file to add executables into your search path.

$ module load ansys/2021r1

There are also licence modulefiles for users to configure where to check out ANSYS licence(s). Users need to join the corresponding ansys software group before they can see the licence module file, for example, only members of ansys_nci group can see the licence module `ansys_licence/nci`. The software group membership not only gives the access to the licence module but also allows checkouts from the corresponding licensing server.

To load the licence module for your own ansys software group, please run

$ module load ansys_licence/<institution>

A example job submission script (fluentjob.sh) is provided below. It requests 96 processors, 380 GB of memory, 400GB of local disk space for 10 minutes in the normal queue. Within the job it tells fluent to use the openmpi provided by Gadi instead of their own to run the simulation on $PBS_NCPUS processors.

#!/bin/bash

#PBS -q normal
#PBS -l walltime=00:10:00
#PBS -l ncpus=96
#PBS -l mem=380Gb
#PBS -l jobfs=1GB
#PBS -l software=<licence_string>
#PBS -l wd

# Load modules, always specify version number.
module load ansys/2021r1
module load ansys_licence/<institution>

# Must include `#PBS -l storage=scratch/ab12+gdata/yz98` if the job
# needs access to `/scratch/ab12/` and `/g/data/yz98/`. Details on:
# https://opus.nci.org.au/display/Help/PBS+Directives+Explained

fluent 3ddp -g -mpi=hpcx -t $PBS_NCPUS -i test.jou >& outputfile

Note that the submission script uses the PBS directive`-l software`, to ask the job scheduler for the reservation of ansys licence seats from licence <licence_string> , see details in the section `Licence requirements` below. To change the number of processors, memory, or jobfs required, and/or project folders to mount, simply modify the corresponding PBS resource requests at the top of this file.

The maximum number of CPU cores a fluent job can use is limited by the licence availability. For example, NCI owns an academic ANSYS licence file which has 128 seats for the hpc feature and it supports jobs request up to 128 CPU cores. If you submit many 128-core fluent jobs, they are expected to run one at a time.

Once the job submission script is saved to the same directory in which the journal file test.jou is located, run 

$ qsub fluentjob.sh 

inside that directory to submit your job to the PBS scheduler.

Restart Jobs

If you need to run Fluent for a very long period of time which exceeds the default walltime limit set for the job, see the walltime limit for different queues and number of cores on the Queue Limits page, we suggest to add checkpoints to the long job, save restart files and use the last one as input to the next job. 

Licence requirements

Users from the following institutions have access to their own institution licences and should join the corresponding software group. To join a software group, login to my.nci.org.au first, search for the group by the software group name, and use the tab `Join` on its project page to submit the membership request. It may take up to 1 business day for the lead CI to respond. Once your group membership request is approved, the corresponding licence module becomes visible and ready for use. Run `module avail ansys` to list all ansys related modulefiles. Jobs need to load the licence module together with the application module to run fluent.

Licence Ownerlicence modulePBS Directive `-lsoftware=`software group
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technologyansys_licence/rmitansys_rmit ansys_rmit
The University of Wollongongansys_licence/wollongongansys_wollongongansys_wollongong
The University of New South Walesansys_licence/unswunsw_ansysunsw_ansys
The University of Sydneyansys_licence/usydansys_usydansys_usyd
Macquarie Universityansys_licence/mqansys_mqansys_mq
Newcastle University ansys_licence/newcastleansys_newcastleansys_newcastle
NCI*ansys_licence/nciansys_nciansys_nci

* NCI owns an academic ANSYS licence file which provides 25 CFD feature seats and 128 HPC feature seats. Users who have no access to the above licences are welcome to join the software group ansys_nci to enable the access to modulefile ansys_licence/nci and the checkouts from licence ansys_nci.