ANSYS

ANSYS is a comprehensive coupled physics tool combining structural, thermal, CFD, acoustic and electromagnetic simulation capabilities. HPC ANSYS uses the campus ANSYS license managed by the College of Engineering.

External Links:
ANSYS website



HPC ANSYS uses the campus ANSYS license managed by the College of Engineering. To access ANSYS users must accept the license terms. Select the Request Access button in the ANSYS entry in the list of Officially Supported Applications on the HPC software web page to accept the license terms. Access should be enabled within a day of accepting the terms.

ANSYS version 23.2, 23.1,22.2, 21.2, 20.1 and 19.1 are installed on the HPC cluster (Hazel). Version 20.1 is the default version loaded by the ansys module.

To use ANSYS 20.1, you need to do the command

module load ansys

to set up appropriate environment. To use other versions of ANSYS, such as 23.2, you need to do the command module load ansys/23.2 to set up appropriate environment. Instructions below are based on using the default version 20.1. If you use other versions of ANSYS, you need to make corresponding changes in module names and ANSYS commands.

To run ANSYS jobs on Hazel you should create a job submission script such as the following:

#!/bin/bash

#SBATCH --ntasks=4
#SBATCH --time=00:10:00
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=4
#SBATCH --error=vm4.err.%j
#SBATCH --output=vm4.out.%j

module load ansys
ansys201 -dis -np 4 -j VM -b < vm2.dat -dir /share/$GROUP/$USER

where in /share/$GROUP/$USER the $GROUP will be your group name and the $USER will be your Unity ID. It is your directory in the scratch file system. ANSYS writes temporary files to that directory due to the parameter -dir /share/$GROUP/$USER specification. If you want ANSYS to write temporary files to a different directory then you can change /share/$GROUP/$USER to a different directory name.

The flag (-p aa_r_hpc ) requests the research license. If you have a small job, you may find you can use the flag (-p aa_t_a ) which requests the teaching license. Another option is to use ABAQUS, a commercial finite element package for which our licensing is less restricted.

The sbatch command should be issued from the directory that contains the ANSYS input file. The standard output and standard error output from the job will be placed in the directory where the sbatch command was issued.

Fluent

To use Fluent in ANSYS 20.1, you still to do the command

module load ansys

to set up appropriate environment. To use Fluent in other versions of ANSYS, you need to spell out the particular version in the module name, such as module load ansys/23.2 to set up appropriate environment.
Below is the job script of a sample Fluent job. Please note that the Fluent command syntax is different between using ANSYS version 20.1 or earlier and using ANSYS version 21.2 or later.

#!/bin/bash

#SBATCH --ntasks=40
#SBATCH --time=01:00:00
#SBATCH --output=out.%j
#SBATCH --error=err.%j

module load ansys

<Fluent command>

For using ANSYS version 20.1 or earlier, the <Fluent command> in the job script will be:

fluent 2ddp -g -slurm -i inputfile.in

Don't change the part of -slurm in the Fluent command since that flag hooks up Fluent with the Slurm batch job scheduler on the HPC system so that your job will be run using the resources that you request with the #SBATCH syntax.
For using ANSYS version 21.2 or later, the <Fluent command> in the job script will be:

fluent 2ddp -g -t$SLURM_NTASKS -slurm -i inputfile.in

Don't change the part of -t$SLURM_NTASKS -slurm in the Fluent command.
The $SLURM_NTASKS is the number of cores requested by the Slurm job. In this case it is 40. You may replace $SLURM_NTASKS by 40 but the disadvantage of using a hard number is in jobs where you change number of cores to request you also need to change the number after -t. If you use $SLURM_NTASKS then when you want to change number of cores to request you can just change the number in #SBATCH --ntasks=40.

Use GUI Interface

If you need to use the ANSYS GUI interface, then you need to use the GUI on VCL node. Refer to HPC-VCL node for generally how to use the HPC environment under VCL.

After you log into the VCL node, open a terminal, and type:

module load ansys

to set up ANSYS environment. Then, if you want to use the ANSYS GUI, type

launcher201

to launch the ANSYS GUI interface.

If you want to use the Fluent GUI, type

fluent

to launch the Fluent GUI interface.

Last modified: July 01 2026 10:44:32.