I've been trying for a couple of weeks to find some software to simulate aerodynamics of cars (or whatever). What options do I have? I know of Fluent and FloWizard which supposedly work very well with CATIA V5 (which I'm using), but I need something that's a lot cheaper (preferably free). what would you recommend?

There's a free piece of software from Nasa for Aerofoils/wings available http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html

not a full aero sim package, probably not what you're after but interesting to play with.

Steve Graber orginally mentioned it http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=8924

All the best

Ali

Not a clue, but have you talked with Tom Loughlin?

http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=28734

I worked with Fluent about 14 years back for modeling annular diffusers --- using any CFD program properly and getting valid results is a degree of magnatude harder than using finite elements for structures -- you have to understand whats going on in the flow situation before you can even think about building a valid model. The boundary conditions for the inlet computational cells are absolutely critical, in reality this means you need a pile of real tunnel results for a very similar flow situation before you can start -- this of course is why formula one aerodynamics evolve rather change in radical steps.

So, fluent is a bit complex then?

I was recently asked to find out what CFD software is available and see if there's anything that could be interesting for the company I work for (a well-known manufacturer of upright freezers and refrigerators).
I was thinking maybe Fluent or FloWizard V2. How do they compare? I think that the ability of using CATIA V5 models directly is a major advantage for FloWizard, as long as it can manage to simulate everything we need...

so I spoke to the people at Fluent today, to find out more about FloWizard. It seems to be what we are looking for, but the price was not. 100 000 SEK/year (that's not all that far from £70000/year) for software and a license that would enable us to perform all of the calculations in-house...

I don't know about you, but I was shocked to hear it would cost that much. I'll ask them about the cost for the software alone, without the updates and support tomorrow.