STAR-CCM+

STAR-CCM+ is a finite volume package for simulating fluid dynamics.

Licencing

To use STAR-CCM+, you must use a Power-On-Demand licence key. The keys are issue on a per-module or per-project basis for students, or to individual staff members.

Note

If you require a licence key for an individual project, please contact aero.computing@imperial.ac.uk, including the reason for your request and cc’ing your supervisor.

Each key provides a fixed number of credits. One credit equals one hour of usage. Credits are consumed whenever STAR-CCM+ is open with an active session, or used for meshing or simulation.

Parallel jobs consume credits at the same rate as serial jobs, so running simulations in parallel, where appropriate, is more “cost-effective”.

Availability

STAR-CCM+ is available from the Education section of the desktop Application menu.

It is also available from a terminal by loading the appropriate module:

module load star-ccm+

Multiple versions of STAR-CCM+ are available. The command above will load the most recent version. To load a specific version, append the version number, for example:

module load star-ccm+/18.06.006-R8

Run STAR-CCM+ by typing:

starccm+

Departmental cluster usage

To run STAR-CCM+ on the departmental cluster, put the following into your SLURM script:

module load star-ccm+
PODKEY="<key>"
LICPATH="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"
starccm+ -np $SLURM_NTASKS -rsh ssh \
    -power -podkey $PODKEY -licpath $LICPATH \
    -batch "<java-file>" "<sim-file>"

replacing

<key> by the POD licence key you have been issued
<java-file> by the Java macro you wish to use (optional, leave blank if not required)
<sim-file> by the STAR-CCM .sim file to run

Using Java macros

When using Java macros in the cluster environment, please do not call

System.exit(0);

at the end. This will prematurely terminate STAR-CCM+ and it will not shut down all the MPI ranks correctly.