28.5 Line and Rake Surfaces

You can create lines and rakes in the domain for releasing particles, obtaining data for comparison with tunnel data, etc. A rake consists of a specified number of points equally spaced between two specified endpoints. A line is simply a line that extends up to and includes the specified endpoints; data points will be located where the line intersects the faces of the cell, and consequently may not be equally spaced.

To create a line or rake surface, you will use the Line/Rake Surface dialog box (Figure  28.5.1).

Surface $\rightarrow$ Line/Rake...

Figure 28.5.1: The Line/Rake Surface Dialog Box

The steps for creating the line or rake surface are as follows:

1.   Indicate whether you are creating a Line surface or a Rake surface by selecting the appropriate item in the Type drop-down list.

2.   If you are creating a rake surface, specify the Number of Points to be equally spaced between the two endpoints.

3.   Specify the location of the line or rake surface. There are three different ways to define the location:

• Enter the coordinates of the first point ( x0,y0,z0) and the last point ( x1,y1,z1) under End Points.

• Click on the Select Points With Mouse button and then select the endpoints by clicking on locations in the active graphics window with the mouse-probe button. (See Section  29.3 for information about setting mouse button functions.)

• Use the Line Tool option to interactively position a line in the graphics window. You can set the initial location of this line using one of the two methods described above for specifying endpoints (or you can start from the position defined by the default End Points). See Section  28.5.1 for information about using the line tool.

Note that the coordinates of the End Points will be updated automatically when you use the second or third method described above.

4.   If you do not want to use the default name assigned to the surface, enter a new name under New Surface Name. The default name is the concatenation of the surface type and an integer which is the new surface ID (e.g., line-5 or rake-6). (If the New Surface Name you enter is the same as the name of a surface that already exists, ANSYS FLUENT will automatically assign the default name to the new surface when it is created.)

The surface name that you enter must begin with an alphabetical letter. If your surface name begins with any other character or number, ANSYS FLUENT will not accept the entry.

5.   Click on the Create button to create the new surface.

If you want to check that your new surface has been added to the list of all defined surfaces, or you want to delete or otherwise manipulate any surfaces, click on the Manage... button to open the Surfaces dialog box. See Section  28.11 for details.