Fluent Inc, then not yet part of ANSYS, joined CO-LaN in February 2002. This was at the beginning of the APECS project that saw CAPE-OPEN interfaces being implemented to permit a Fluent CFD model of a Unit Operation to be plugged in a process simulator. This achievement was presented at the ESCAPE 12 conference held in The Hague, the Netherlands. Initially this feature was demonstrated in Aspen Plus but later on CO-LaN was able to test it in various PMEs when ANSYS provided a license of Fluent to CO-LaN.
This bridge between CFD and process simulation software was much used within the APECS project at the National Energy Technologies Laboratory under the leadership of Dr Steve ZITNEY. Work related to APECS, together with U.S. DOE/National Energy Technology Laboratory, was presented at the 3rd CAPE-OPEN US Conference held within the AIChE 2006 Annual Meeting, November 2006, San Francisco, California. A compilation of the work done in APECS was presented by Dr ZITNEY at the 7th International Conference on the Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design (FOCAPD, 2009, Breckenridge, Colorado, USA. As stated by Dr ZITNEY, “APECS is compliant with the process-industry CAPE-OPEN software standard and facilitates efficient integration, solution, and analysis of process/equipment co-simulations.”
Following the end of APECS, the use of the CAPE-OPEN bridge between Fluent and PMEs went to a still and ANSYS did not distribute anymore the corresponding piece of software.
Fluent was initially represented in CO-LaN by Madhava SYAMLAL. Maxwell OSAWE represented ANSYS-Fluent in CO-LaN from January 2005 till November 17, 2006. Dr Jens MADSEN was then nominated representative in CO-LaN till February 2008. Dr Tony GARRATT has been designated ANSYS representative in CO-LaN on September 26, 2018.
On November 6, 2020, Dr Tony GARRATT notified CO-LaN that, effective December 31, 2020, ANSYS resigns from CO-LaN membership for the time being. ANSYS stated then that “if, in the future, ANSYS receives requests from customers or projects that require us to support CAPE-OPEN interfaces, ANSYS will ask to re-join“.
CO-LaN Management Board has canceled ANSYS’ s membership in CO-LaN as of January 1, 2021.