[go: up one dir, main page]

Compare the Top CFD Software as of October 2025

What is CFD Software?

CFD software is used to simulate fluid flow through a physical system. It uses numerical methods and algorithms to calculate complex flows involving heat transfer, turbulence and chemical reactions. CFD software is widely used in many industries, such as automotive and aerospace engineering, to identify potential design flaws before the product goes into production. Compare and read user reviews of the best CFD software currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Azore CFD

    Azore CFD

    Azore CFD

    AzoreCFD has been a trusted, cutting-edge software tool since 2007. Azore focuses on analysis, design, engineering, and on obtaining precise, and quick results. Customers use Azore for applications that include: industrial flows, aerodynamics, thermal mixing, conjugate heat transfer, gas species mixing, heating and cooling systems, external flows, and more. Azore can be used to simulate essentially any steady-state or transient fluid flow model, including problems that involve conjugate heat transfer and special transport. With flexible pre/post processing, Azore allows for arbitrary polyhedral mesh topology with several import formats supported. Built-in post-processing capabilities includes: scalar fields, pathlines, animations, residual reports, vector fields, ISO-surfaces, force & movement reports, and export for external post-processing.
  • 2
    Orbital Stack

    Orbital Stack

    Orbital Stack

    Orbital Stack is an AI and CFD web-based software that provides earlier qualitative guidance, comparing a large number of design options while highlighting any potential wind and thermal comfort red flags. It allows for the realization of a variety of climate-conscious, high-performance developments not previously feasible due to cost and/or time constraints associated with traditional studies. Orbital Stack is the first digital climate-analysis tool built by global leaders in wind and microclimate engineering using real wind tunnel data. It is truly a game-changer for the architecture and building design sector, offering our clients direct access to wind comfort and safety analysis, thermal comfort and shadowing analysis, and cladding pressure simulations. This means architects can run their own wind simulations and quickly understand the climate impacts of their proposed building designs from the start, making decisions that result in higher performing and more resilient projects.
    Starting Price: $0
  • 3
    Pipe Flow Calculations

    Pipe Flow Calculations

    Zoran Savovic PR Application Services

    Fast & Accurate Fluid Flow Calculations. Pipe Flow Calculator is essential for engineers, students, and professionals working with fluid dynamics. With 18 desktop calculators, it solves simple and complex fluid flow problems in under a minute—GUARANTEED. Why Choose Pipe Flow Calculator? ✅ Easy to Use – Just enter values and get instant results. ✅ Trusted Worldwide – Used daily by thousands of professionals. ✅ Reliable & Updated – Bug fixes within 1-2 days. ✅ Transparent Calculations – All formulas are provided. Key Features ✔️ Switch between metric and imperial units. ✔️ Select pipes, materials, and fluids from predefined lists. ✔️ Export results to Excel & Word, save, print, and continue where you left off. ✔️ Copy/paste full calculation reports. Available Calculators 🔹 Pressure Drop, Pipe Diameter, Pump Performance, Reynolds Number 🔹 Orifice Plate, Venturi Tube, Nozzle, Prandtl Probe 🔹 Control Valve, Gas Flow, LPG, Thermal Energy
    Starting Price: $9.95/month
  • 4
    ParaView

    ParaView

    Kitware

    ParaView is an open source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization application that enables users to build visualizations for analyzing data using qualitative and quantitative techniques. It supports interactive 3D exploration and programmatic data processing through batch processing capabilities. ParaView is designed to handle extremely large datasets using distributed memory computing resources, making it suitable for supercomputers analyzing terascale datasets as well as laptops for smaller data. The application features a client-server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets and generates level-of-detail models to maintain interactive frame rates for large datasets. ParaView's extensible architecture is based on open standards, allowing for customization and integration with existing tools and workflows. It includes readers for various well-known file formats and offers more than 200 filters and tools for data processing and visualization.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 5
    Ansys CFX
    Known for its extreme robustness, CFX is the gold standard CFD software when it comes to turbomachinery applications. Both solver and models are wrapped in a modern, intuitive, and flexible GUI, with extensive capabilities for customization and automation using session files, scripting and a powerful expression language. Highly scalable high-performance computing will help speed up simulations including pumps, fans, compressors and turbines. New manufacturing methods have opened the door to more effective turbine cooling channel geometries. The new geometries will lead to better performance and efficiency but are more complex. To achieve highly accurate results, a team of Purdue engineers turned to Ansys CFX. The engineers executed key computations with little turnaround time. With the extra time, they could perform more in-depth comparisons and run further simulations to fully optimize their product.
  • 6
    Ansys Icepak
    Ansys Icepak is a CFD solver for electronics thermal management. It predicts airflow, temperature, and heat transfer in IC packages, PCBs, electronic assemblies/enclosures, and power electronics. Ansys Icepak provides powerful electronic cooling solutions that utilize the industry-leading Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver for thermal and fluid flow analyses of integrated circuits (ICs), packages, printed circuit boards (PCBs), and electronic assemblies. The Ansys Icepak CFD solver uses the Ansys Electronics Desktop (AEDT) graphical user interface (GUI). Perform conduction, convection, and radiation conjugate heat transfer analyses, with many advanced capabilities to model laminar and turbulent flows, and species analysis including radiation and convection. Ansys’ complete PCB design solution enables you to simulate PCBs, ICs, and packages and accurately evaluate an entire system.
  • 7
    CF-MESH+

    CF-MESH+

    Creative Fields Holding, Ltd.

    CF-MESH+ is the latest CFD meshing software version developed by Creative Fields. It comprises advanced meshing workflows with an easy-to-use front-end interface allowing for superior user experience and efficiency. It features a powerful set of tools and functionalities for generating quality CFD meshes in arbitrary complex geometries encountered within the industry. The software features a degree of robustness that will help you enhance your productivity and get a competitive advantage in your simulation efforts.
    Starting Price: $500
  • 8
    SimFlow

    SimFlow

    SIMFLOW Technologies

    SimFlow is a desktop Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis software for Windows and Linux OS. It is based on OpenFOAM libraries, acting like an OpenFOAM GUI. It is a professional CAE package for engineers offering fully-featured 3D simulations. SimFlow is a powerful general-purpose CFD software. It combines an intuitive graphical user interface with the advantages of the open-source OpenFOAM® libraries. Download SimFlow and use it for free in an evaluation mode to solve the most complex problems you face as an engineer, scientist or student. Maybe you use CFD software on a daily basis or maybe just want to start your adventure. Install SimFlow, rediscover the CFD world without any time limit and enjoy powerful fluid simulation software.
  • 9
    Simcenter STAR-CCM+

    Simcenter STAR-CCM+

    Siemens Digital Industries

    Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is a multiphysics computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software for the simulation of products operating under real-world conditions. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ uniquely brings automated design exploration and optimization to the CFD simulation toolkit of every engineer. The single integrated environment includes everything from CAD, automated meshing, multiphysics CFD, sophisticated postprocessing, and design exploration. This allows engineers to efficiently explore the entire design space to make better design decisions faster. The additional insight gained by using Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to guide your design process ultimately leads to more innovative products that exceed customer expectations. Significantly improving a battery design across its whole operating range is a challenging task, and involves the simultaneous optimization of numerous parameters. Simcenter provides a complete simulation environment for the analysis and design of the electrochemical system.
  • 10
    Altair Activate
    Altair Activate can be applied to model and simulate a broad range of products as a system-of-systems to discover better designs, faster. Products in every industry are becoming increasingly complex and electrified, as well as smarter and more connected. Multi-disciplinary system-level simulation capabilities help develop smart, complex mechatronic systems holistically while enabling more streamlined product development teamwork and workflows. Altair Activate breaks down silos between mechanical subsystems, electrical subsystems, control subsystems, electronic subsystems, software, hardware-in-the-loop, data analytics, and more. Model thermal-fluid system dynamics using 1D modeling &and simulation (rather than using only 3D CFD) to yield nearly-as-accurate results significantly faster – to enable more design exploration and optimized performance in less time.
  • 11
    SpectreUQ

    SpectreUQ

    Intelligent Light

    SpectreUQ™ builds on the mature and sophisticated DAKOTA software from Sandia National Laboratories and adds a wizard to guide the engineer through the UQ process. The details of the disciplined UQ process are handled behind the scenes. It uses a database to store results from experiments and simulations in a structured fashion and provides interactive graphing and visualization tools. Provided via an annual subscription without user count restrictions and in source code form. SpectreUQ™ unlike other methods is non-intrusive to the simulation; it runs alongside the code, not within it. Using your own HPC, you are free to evaluate hundreds of flight conditions to train built-in surrogate models. Easy to learn and use, tuned over hundreds of hours of use on actual UQ studies. The Oberkampf-Roy method is used to guide the process of ingesting experimental data and CFD results. Interactive plots of results are easy to explore and publish.
  • 12
    UrbaWind

    UrbaWind

    Meteodyn

    Wind is a difficult to grasp. In an urbanized environment, its behavior becomes more complex in contact with buildings, and many effects can occur: speed-ups (Venturi effect), vortices, plunging flows, interference, detachments, etc. The built environment thus creates a microclimate that often causes discomfort for users. To achieve sustainable architecture and urban planning, it is essential to study these aerodynamic phenomena and to integrate them as early as possible in urban projects. its study is more and more requested by project owners in many countries. Its consideration is necessary for the proper development of an outdoor public space and the well-being of users. UrbaWind allows you to compute the wind comfort of pedestrians according to the comfort standards of different countries.
  • 13
    AKL FlowDesigner
    AKL FlowDesigner is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software that enables wind analysis by easily importing 3D models of buildings or urban blocks developed by modeling tools such as Autodesk Revit, GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD, Rhinoceros and SketchUp. AKL FlowDesigner is BIM capable in IFC format. Architects, designers, engineers and consultants can use AKL FlowDesigner early in the design process to understand and visualize airflow around their projects. Early analysis reduces design time and gives a powerful impression to clients. CFD simulation of AKL FlowDesigner gives you the maximum benefit in the application of AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industry. Airflow simulation used to be a complex and time-consuming task requiring deep technical knowledge. No more! AKL FlowDesigner allows any user to create simulations and analyze airflow in minutes. No engineering degree or complex calculations are required!
  • 14
    CAESIM

    CAESIM

    Adaptive Research

    Adaptive Research is pleased to announce the immediate release of the CAESIM 2024 simulation platform, providing advanced computational fluid dynamics modeling with multi-physics capabilities. The new software release provides new tools and capabilities that optimize the modeling process and provide the CFD engineer with fast simulation solutions.
    Starting Price: $1295/annual standard
  • 15
    Fidelity CFD

    Fidelity CFD

    Cadence Design Systems

    Accelerate engineering with the industry's only intuitive, comprehensive CFD platform for multidisciplinary design and optimization. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an aspect of multiphysics system analysis that simulates the behavior of fluids and their thermodynamic properties using numerical models. Engineers use the Cadence Fidelity CFD platform design processes, such as propulsion, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, and combustion, to improve and increase the efficiency of products by reducing time-consuming and expensive physical testing. Fidelity CFD platform provides an easy-to-use end-to-end CFD solution for multidisciplinary design and optimization, in applications such as aerospace, automotive, turbomachinery, and marine industries. The platform, with its streamlined workflows, massively parallel architecture, and state-of-the-art solver technology, provides unprecedented performance and accuracy and increases engineering efficiency for today’s design challenges.
  • 16
    Stallion 3D

    Stallion 3D

    Hanley Innovations

    Stallion 3D quickly generates aerodynamic performance data (lift, drag and moments) for new and existing CAD designs. Get superior RANS results without having to make a single grid. Grid generation in Stallion 3D is fully automatic. This eliminates the most time consuming and painful bottleneck in CFD. Stallion 3D quickly and accurately predicts the aerodynamic performance of your designs using its proprietary CFD algorithm (HIST). The software imports your CAD models and generates the 3D aerodynamic data needed to verify your designs and ensure your success. Reports of lift, drag, yaw, roll, pitch magnitudes and related forces and moments in the coordinates direction. Plots of 2D line graphs of Cp, velocity, mach number, density and temperature at constant coordinates locations long the STL surface (for example, you can plot Cp (x) at any span location along the wing).
  • 17
    AM PravaH

    AM PravaH

    Paanduv Applications

    AM PravaH® is a graphical user interface (GUI)-based high-performance simulation software, specifically designed for additive manufacturing. It is developed by Paanduv R&D and is a combination of parallelized computational modeling with state-of-the-art numerical methods provided by international research leaders and in-house.
  • Previous
  • You're on page 1
  • Next