March 3, 2017

What is a Run-Ready Workflow?

Updated 17.11.2018

The ability to reproduce simulation or analytical model results in a quick and simple way is one of the most beneficial ideas of modern engineering. It often happens that engineers and data analysis experts need models which they can reuse with minor changes being introduced, present to others or further apply to simplify and quantify any other problem that may arise. pSeven provides field experts with an opportunity to represent these problems in the form of a Run-Ready Workflow that functions as a user-friendly pSeven-based application.

Below are some practical steps needed to create a Run-Ready Workflow based on an ordinary design optimization problem.

Creating a Run-Ready Workflow

In this example, we will design the heat exchanger cold plate with a Run-Ready Workflow using pSeven and FloEFD (CFD software by Mentor Graphics). In pSeven 6.10, we added FloEFD direct integration block, thus making our Run-Ready Workflow structure very simple to comprise only three blocks - Design space exploration and Composite with FloEFD integration block inside (more details about Composite block benefits are given here).

Figure 1. Run-Ready Workflow structure

Run-Ready Workflow should preliminary refer all unimportant parameters and ports to the given values. For example, there are some necessary parameters in this workflow an expert may want to change, namely:

• heat generation rate of the diode;
• heat generation rate of the insulated-gate bipolar transistor;
• volume flow rate;
• temperature.

It should be impossible to set all other ports and parameters from the Run screen.

First, we create a Composite block and a FloEFD block inside it. Second, we load the FloEFD project tree and select the required input and output variables (ref. to Figure 2). Third, we just uplink the block and create an optimization cycle with our Design space exploration block. As a result, we will get a self-consistent optimization workflow (ref. to Figure 1).

Figure 2. FloEFD block configuration process

Using a Run-Ready Workflow

Now our workflow can be used as a Run-Ready one and be configured directly from the Run screen (ref. to Figure 3). As there's no need to change the configuration of each particular block, it makes further work easy and illustrative. Moreover, this workflow can be run using pSeven Runner license, designed specifically for this purpose. Run-Ready Workflows can be executed on any other computer with pSeven Runner being installed. This feature makes such workflows portable and extremely useful for presenting models to colleagues.

Figure 3. Run screen in pSeven and results in FloEFD

As you can see, Run-Ready Workflows are a simple and powerful tool catering the needs of any expert. One cannot overstate the benefits of this design technique, the Run-ready workflow is not so difficult to develop as compared with a standard workflow.

FloEFD integration case and other run-ready workflows can be found in pSeven examples.