Simulating a Turkey: Lessons in Speeding Up Simulation Projects
Like many of us, I’ve been “cooking” a turkey lately—but mine is a little different. It’s a simulated turkey. With the holidays around the corner, I wanted to test a thermal conduction model for an unrelated project, and a turkey seemed like the perfect stand-in. However, I found myself worried that the simulation wouldn’t be ready in time. That’s when I fell back on a set of tricks I often use to ensure simulation projects finish on schedule.
Whether you’re running a CFD analysis, thermal conduction model, or even stress simulations, these strategies can save you time and computing resources—without compromising accuracy where it matters. Let’s dig in.
1. Simplify the Geometry
When running simulations, accuracy is essential, but that doesn’t mean every detail needs to be hyper-realistic. In my case, I replaced the unnecessarily complex turkey geometry in my model with a sphere.
Yes, a sphere. Anyone familiar with the joke about "spherical chickens in a vacuum" will appreciate the humor here. While the sphere doesn’t look like a turkey, it captures the heat conduction patterns I needed to test while slashing computation time.
Takeaway: Identify what’s critical for your simulation and simplify everything else. Your computer—and your deadline—will thank you.
2. Right-Size Your Mesh
Mesh settings are one of the most important levers you can pull to balance accuracy and computational efficiency. For this turkey simulation, I started with a coarse global mesh but added a finer local mesh near the surface of the turkey. This captured the thermal gradient details where it mattered most without bogging down the computation elsewhere.
Takeaway: Use fine mesh where accuracy is essential and coarse mesh elsewhere. It’s the best of both worlds—precision without the excessive cost.
3. Reduce the Computation Volume with Symmetry
Symmetry is your friend. By leveraging it, I was able to shrink my simulation volume to one-eighth of its original size while still capturing all the relevant data. Not only does this drastically reduce computational effort, but it also makes setup and visualization much simpler.
Takeaway: When possible, exploit symmetry to reduce computation times without sacrificing data integrity.
4. Use a Remote Compute Server
If your simulation software supports it, offload the heavy lifting to a remote compute server. This approach allowed my main machine to remain free for setting up the next simulation task while the turkey model crunched away in the background.
Takeaway: Remote servers aren’t just for large-scale operations—they can also streamline day-to-day workflows, especially for resource-intensive simulations.
5. Fine-Tune Your Time Steps
For transient studies like this thermal conduction simulation, the size of your time steps can make or break the project’s efficiency.
For short-duration phenomena like fluid sloshing or vessel filling, use smaller time steps to capture rapid changes accurately.
For slower processes, like thermal conduction, adjust the time steps to reflect the larger time constants. For my turkey simulation, nothing meaningful was happening at the second scale, so I opted for larger time steps to keep the simulation moving.
Takeaway: Match your time steps to the dynamics of your study. It saves time without compromising data quality.
6. Validate Initial Conditions
The accuracy of your results depends on meaningful initial conditions. For my turkey model, I set the oven temperature to 350°F and the turkey’s initial temperature to a chilly 68°F. These starting conditions ensured realistic thermal behavior throughout the simulation.
Takeaway: Double-check that your initial values make sense. It’s an easy step to overlook but can save you from major headaches later.
Final Thoughts
While simulating a turkey may not be your typical engineering project, the principles behind it are universal. Simplify where you can, prioritize precision where it matters, and use every tool at your disposal to optimize efficiency.
So whether you’re “cooking” a turkey, simulating fluid dynamics, or testing a new hardware design, remember these tips. They might just save your project—and your sanity.
In the next post we'll explore how to make our simulation more realistic, and look how it compares to real-world cooking times. Until then - Happy simulating, and happy holidays!
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