STARCCM+ Training

Representatives from CD-adapco will be on-site on June 2, 2011 to provide training on their computer-aided engineering tool STAR-CCM+. The training will include lectures during the morning, followed by a tutorial exercise in the afternoon. Lectures will cover a range of topics on physics, mesh generation, and parallel computation. The tutorial exercise will provide an overview of model setup and execution for an example nuclear reactor application.

Argonne and CD-adapco have been working together for over a decade now, and this training also provides an opportunity to meet the staff that supports us:

• Emilio Baglietto, Director of Nuclear Applications ( Emilio's Bio)
• Scott Wilensky, Principal Application Support Engineer ( Scott's Bio)
• Steve Straub, Account Executive

During the afternoon, while new users are participating in the tutorial exercise, Emilio Baglietto will be available by appointment with experienced users. If you would like to meet with him in the afternoon, please indicate this in the form below.

To attend the training please register at http://www.lcrc.anl.gov/tutorials/starccm/registration/registration.php .

What is STAR-CCM+?

STAR-CCM+ is a commercial computer-aided engineering package developed by CD-adapco. Originally developed for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, it has been expanded to include additional continuum mechanics models, most notably heat transfer and solid stress models. Additional information about STAR-CCM+ is available at CD-adapco’s website: http://www.cd-adapco.com/products/star_ccm_plus/index.html

STAR-CCM+ is currently used at Argonne to model a variety of applications which include nuclear reactor cooling, dispersion of harmful particulates in ventilation systems and urban landscapes, blood flow and heat transfer during surgery, and the erosion of river beds near bridges.

How do I get STAR-CCM+

STAR-CCM+ was one of the original applications used to test the LCRC computing facilities, and is available to all Fusion users, on-site or off-site. Argonne has a site-wide license for STAR-CCM+ where 20 instances of the code may be run simultaneously. In addition to Fusion, it has also been installed on clusters in the NE Division, MCS Division, and TRACC. If you work at Argonne and would like a copy of STAR-CCM+ installed on another Argonne machine, please contact Justin Thomas (ANL).

How do I participate in the tutorial exercise?

The tutorial exercise is intended to those who are new to STAR-CCM+, including STAR-CD users who have not yet embraced STAR-CCM+. If you would like to follow along on your own laptop during the exercise, you are welcome to do so. (Otherwise, you are welcome to follow along on the projector screen or look over your neighbor’s shoulder.) We will be able to run STAR-CCM+ remotely from a reservation of Fusion nodes that will be available for the course. In order to participate you will need a Fusion account. If you do not yet have one, please request an account at: https://accounts.lcrc.anl.gov. Please check that you are able to log into Fusion prior to the tutorial, if you need assistance email [email protected].

In order to run STAR-CCM+ remotely on Fusion, you need to be able to (1) log into Fusion via an ssh-client running in a terminal and (2) display X-motif or OpenGL graphics remotely. If you don’t know what that means continue reading.

If you have a Macbook or a PC laptop running Linux, you should be ready to go.

If you have a Windows PC-based laptop, then you will need to install an SSH client and an X-windows server. There are free ones available at:

• PuTTY (SSH client): http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
• Xming (Xwindows server): http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/

Before arriving, please test that you can (1) log into Fusion and (2) open STAR-CCM+. Follow this procedure:

1. Log into Fusion using Putty (Windows), Terminal.app (Mac), or the terminal (Linux). On Mac and Linux, be sure to use the –X (minus capital X) option when using the ssh command in order to forward X11. In Windows, make sure that Putty is configured (check the settings) to forward X11.

2. Set up your environment to run STAR-CCM+. On Fusion, edit the file named .soft in your root directory. Copy and paste the following into your ssh window on Fusion:

cat >> .soft <<EOF
+starccm+-6.02.007
EOF
resoft

3. Check your environment by issuing the command:

which starccm+

This should return:

/soft/starccm+/6.02.007/starccm+6.02.007/star/bin/starccm+

4. Submit an interactive job by issuing this command:

qsub -I -lnodes=1:ppn=8,walltime=00:30:00 -q shared

5. You will be logged into a compute node on Fusion. To determine which of these machines you are logged into, enter this command:

hostname

This should return a name like “f1”, “f2”, or “f3”. Let’s suppose it returned “f2”.

6. Open a second window on Fusion, just like you did in Step 1. Do not close the first window on Fusion. Then log into f2 using the command:

ssh -X f2

7. In this second window, issue the command to start the STAR-CCM+ client:

starccm+ -mesa &

If the STAR-CCM+ window appeared on your screen at the end of step 5, then you are ready to go. If you like, click Help and feel free to check out the online manuals. Otherwise, click File and Exit. From now on, you should be able to skip steps 1 – 3.