The variety of mesh setting in Icepak is always making us love and hate at the same time. Most of the cases, hate is more. That’s one of the reason why so many colleagues choose to embrace Flotherm.

I choose Icepak as my major simulation tool is just because I learned Fluent in school. So once I knew Icepak is based on Fluent engine, hmm… so familiar to me. Of course, they all have their pros and cons. Otherwise, why Icepak can still stand in market, right?

Why the setting in Icepak mesh is so complex, one of the main reason is to fit the geometry. Facing this tough question, Flotherm choose to use all hex element with local refinement to solve this. By doing this, all the curve or slope will all be shown like sawteeth.
For the same question, Icepak chooses to maintain the geometry outline and finally develops a lot of different element type.

If we take numerical integral as a analogy, Flotherm is more like a Riemann integral and Icepak is more like a trapezoidal integral.
 

Which leads to that:
1. If the mesh number is the same, Icepak can hold the geometry outline. Inversely speaking, if Flotherm wants to get the same proximity, the mesh number will grow rapidly.
2. The geometry fitness can directly do influence to flow filed solution. Icepak can do better performance near curved surface than Flotherm. Of course, that depends on your target. Maybe you don’t care about it at all.

One possible reason of that might because that Icepak is a specialized module from Fluent with a user-friendly UI (although it’s still…) and some user-friendly parameters (again, although it’s still…). The whole structure is still based on Fluent.
As a universal solver, Fluent is not only aimed to system cooling. It can also solve aerodynamics problem for example. In aerodynamics, geometry cares a lot ! However, Icepak doesn’t develop its own solver. It is just a repackaged version of Fluent, so it inherit all the properties, both good and bad.

Generally speaking, the user unfriendly is because it’s ability beyond our usage.

Flotherm is invented for electronic system cooling, very straight forward user group. So they can overlook things bravely. The result is a true user friendly. The setting parameter is much more less than Icepak. If the thing we care is only the temperature, then why bothers?

So Flotherm presents a just tool for using.

I’ve seen one says: Just like BENZ and BMW, they are all good.