Ansys

Introduction

Ansys offers a comprehensive software suite that spans the entire range of physics, providing access to virtually any field of engineering simulation that a design process requires.

Availability

Ansys is available on ARC systems. Virginia Tech maintains a limited quantity of Ansys network licenses through the university’s IT Procurement and Licensing Solutions. Versions available on ARC clusters:

• ANSYS/2025R1

• ANSYS/2024R1

Interface

The primary interface for using Ansys on ARC resources is via the command line. For example on Tinkercliffs, you can get detailed command line help for using Ansys fluent solver like this:

[mypid@tinkercliffs1 ~]$ module load ANSYS/2025R1
[mypid@tinkercliffs1 ~]$ fluent -help
/apps/common/software/ansys/2025R1/v251/fluent/fluent25.1.0/bin/fluent -r25.1.0 -help
Usage: fluent [version] [-help] [options]
options:
  -act            load ACT Start page,
  -affinity=<x>   set processor affinity; <x>={core | sock | off>,
  -case <file_path> [-data]
                  reads the case file immediately after Fluent
                  launches; can include the data file if it
                  shares the same name as the case file,
  -cflush         flush the file cache buffer,
  -cnf=<x>        specify the hosts file,
  -command="<TUI command>"
                  run TUI command on startup,
  -driver <name>  sets the graphics driver;
                  <name>={opengl2 | x11 | opengl2-mesa | null},
  -env            show environment variables,
  -g              run without GUI or graphics
...

Available Solvers

Structures & Dynamics	Fluids (CFD)	Electromagnetics	Particles & Materials	Multiphysics	Optimization & AI
ansys	fluent	AnsysEM/EM_RSM	rocky	SystemCoupling	optiSLang
autodyn	CFX	Electronics	reaction	TwinAI	RSM
Motion	CFD-Post	aisol	Additive	Framework	EM_RSM
Additive	icemcfd	sherlock		commonfiles	TwinAI
ACP	TurboGrid	OpticalProducts
CEI	polyflow	Lumerical
dpf	aqwa
	fensapice

Licensing

Virginia Tech hosts a central license server to manage licensing for Ansys products. Licenses have been purchased by various departments and research groups.

You can query the general status of the licenses, you can use the following command from any ARC node.

lmutil lmstat -c 1055@ansys.software.vt.edu -a

If you are facing license limitations, you can submit a help request to ask for assistance.

Examples and Tutorials

ARC maintains a collection of example Ansys and fluent solver input scripts and job submission templates in a public GitHub repository. Users are encouraged to review and adapt these examples when developing their own simulations. The ARC Ansys examples repository is available at: https://github.com/AdvancedResearchComputing/examples/tree/master/ansys