The first step in setting up a simulation in CONVERGE Studio is importing your geometry. Historically, CONVERGE required users working in a CAD environment to export their geometries as a triangulated STL file, which could delay the flow of the project by introducing an additional step. To streamline the process, CONVERGE partners with Spatial Corp., a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes. Rather than being limited to importing a triangulated STL file, users can now import their geometry in a variety of common CAD formats. When CONVERGE Studio receives a parameterized surface, Spatial modules will automatically triangulate the geometry, significantly reducing user workload.

After importing, the next step is to clean your geometry and diagnose any potential problems from the get-go. To obtain an error-free surface, CONVERGE partners with Polygonica to integrate additional geometry manipulation toolkits in CONVERGE Studio. These tools expedite the cleanup process and streamline the pre-processing workflow.

Fluid-structure interactions (FSI) can cause complex solid deformation, which can in turn affect the fluid flow. Through coupling with the Abaqus finite element analysis (FEA) software, CONVERGE allows engineers to solve these advanced 3D FSI problems. The coupling is achieved through the Simulia Co-simulation Engine API, which facilitates runtime data exchange. For each time-step in a simulation, CONVERGE calculates the fluid forces and passes them to Abaqus. The Abaqus solver applies the fluid forces to solve for the solid deformation and transfers that data back to CONVERGE. This coupled approach enables the study of complex problems across multiple domains, such as elastomeric bladder tanks in the aerospace industry, piston and valve deformations in the automotive sector, and heart valves and cardiac flows in the biomedical space.

While small CFD simulations can be executed in serial on a local machine in a reasonable amount of time, larger simulations often require a cluster of servers running in parallel to achieve acceptable runtimes without sacrificing accuracy. To address this need, we developed CONVERGE Horizon, a cloud computing service that allows you to run larger and more cost-effective simulations. To provide the computing power, CONVERGE Horizon partners with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), giving users on-demand access to OCI's state-of-the-art bare metal servers and virtual machines at a discount. And to provide further cost savings, CONVERGE Horizon users have access to CONVERGE on demand, allowing you to pay only for the software you need for your simulation workload.

CONVERGE and GT-SUITE offer streamlined integration to allow users of either program to leverage the power of both programs.

GT-SUITE users can purchase GT-CONVERGE, which is a specialized, reduced-cost version of CONVERGE that includes the software's powerful and accurate 3D flow solver that can simulate complex geometries with no user meshing. GT-CONVERGE has an easy-to-use interface to rapidly set up simulations and perform parametric studies by creating multiple cases at a time.

CONVERGE users who also have a GT-SUITE license can take advantage of CONVERGE's detailed chemistry solver, multi-phase flow modeling, and other powerful features while performing advanced CONVERGE + GT-SUITE coupled simulations. Coupling applications include engine cylinder coupling, exhaust aftertreatment coupling, and fluid-structure interaction coupling.

CONVERGE offers several convenient options for visualizing your simulation results. Included within our software package is a complimentary Tecplot for CONVERGE license; Tecplot can be launched directly from CONVERGE Studio. Alternatively, CONVERGE Studio contains an integrated ParaView module, allowing you to perform your entire simulation workflow-from pre- to post-processing-in a single program. Both Tecplot for CONVERGE and Studio ParaView contain a multitude of tools for analyzing and visualizing your data. Finally, CONVERGE's post_convert tool easily converts individual cell data to a variety of other post-processing formats, including EnSight and FieldView.

In addition to these post-processing options, CONVERGE allows for in situ post-processing through ParaView Catalyst. ParaView Catalyst connects CONVERGE to ParaView, enabling the CFD data to be processed while the simulation is running. With this option, users obtain post-processed results as soon as their simulation is complete. Furthermore, in situ post-processing allows you to extract only the most important data from your simulation, significantly reducing the size of the files you need to download from the computational server to your workstation.