Pathlines plot

The Pathlines plot enables you to trace the path that selected fluid particles have taken, so you can gain a deeper understanding of their history. With this plot, you can answer questions such as, which gate the fluid particles entered from, how far they traveled before they froze, or the path they took through a complex geometry.

Attention: The pathline plot has a dependency on both mesh density and velocity results. In order to get suitable coverage of pathlines for complex analyses, the mesh density and number of solver outputs may need to be increased. This is particularly evident in analyses that involve inertia and/or jetting.

With this implementation, you can plot the following data about fluid particles along their pathlines:

Pressure
Temperature
Shear rate
Time
Speed

Note: The pathlines plots represent datapoints for fluid particles along their pathlines, at the time that those particles travelled past each datapoint location. Once written, the value doesn't change; the values don't change with time. As a consequence, they do not map directly to similar results, such as the pressure result, or the temperature result, which show how the value at a given location changes with time.

This feature is supported for the following mesh types:

and the following molding processes:

Thermoplastics injection molding,
Thermoplastics overmolding,
Reactive molding.

for analyses that include Fill.

The initial view of the pathlines plot is a trace of pathlines from the injection location(s) through the entire part.

If you want to plot the pathlines of only those fluid particles that have reached a specific location in the mold, switch from From injection location(s), to Terminating in selected area, and select the specific area.

The controls in the Tools tab enable you to change various aspects of the plot, including:

A. which pathlines you want to see
B. the area you would like to view
C. the density of the pathlines
D. the style of the pathlines: lines, markers or tubes
E. scaling