Rocky Release Notes
ANSYS, Inc. Release 2025 R1.1
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Table of Contents
1. Ansys Rocky Release Notes ..................................................................................................................... 5
1.1. New Features .................................................................................................................................... 5
1.1.1. General New Features .............................................................................................................. 5
1.1.2. Ansys Rocky Coupling with Ansys Fluent Software New Features .............................................. 5
1.2. Improvements .................................................................................................................................. 6
1.2.1. General Improvements ............................................................................................................. 6
1.2.2. SPH Improvements .................................................................................................................. 6
1.2.3. Performance Improvements ..................................................................................................... 7
1.2.4. User Experience Improvements ................................................................................................ 7
1.2.5. Postprocessing Improvements ................................................................................................. 7
1.3. Rocky Modules ................................................................................................................................. 7
1.4. Beta in This Release ........................................................................................................................... 8
1.5. PyRocky ........................................................................................................................................... 9
1.6. Resolved Issues and Limitations ........................................................................................................ 9
1.7. Rocky Software Installation ............................................................................................................. 10
1.7.1. Automated Installer ................................................................................................................ 10
1.7.2. Rocky Student Version ............................................................................................................ 10
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
Published: 2025-02-12 iii
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
iv Published: 2025-02-12
Chapter 1: Ansys Rocky Release Notes
The following sections contain release information for Ansys Rocky™ particle dynamics simulation
software 2025 R1.1.
This Rocky release continues to address customers' needs delivering features that enable users to perform
accurate DEM simulations, and optimize user experience, allowing limitless possibilities on particle dy-
namics simulation.
Welcome to Ansys Rocky Software 2025 R1.1!
1.1. New Features
In this section you will find all Rocky new features present in the 2025 R1 version.
1.1.1. General New Features
• Rocky SDK New Features
Native calculations for strain rate tensor and velocity gradient vector was implemented and aims
to facilitate the implementation of non-Newtonian fluid modules.
For more details see Rocky for Developers.
• PrePost Scripting New Features
The support for creating custom curves and custom properties through Rocky scripting tool was
added enabling more automation capabilities to your simulations.
For more details see Rocky for Developers.
• Point Clouds in Motion Frames
The Point Cloud feature enables you to import a text file containing field data that defines one or
more points in space. Now with the 2025 R1 version it is possible to add this functionality along
with Motion Frames.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
1.1.2. Ansys Rocky Coupling with Ansys Fluent Software New Features
See below the new features you can use to perform the Ansys Rocky coupling with Ansys Fluent®
software:
• Advanced option to use DDPM approach for single-phase 2-way unresolved coupling.
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
Published: 2025-02-12 5
Ansys Rocky Release Notes
• Turbulence model support for 2-way semi-resolved coupling.
• It was added the Fluent Cell volume and cumulative exchanged heat on geometries as new prop-
erties related to 2-way coupled problems.
• Volumetric diffusion parameter to control the minimum number of the iterations of the algorithm.
• Advanced option to increase the frequency of update of Fluent mesh coordinates when running
2-way coupled cases with mesh motion.
1.2. Improvements
In this section you will find the enhancements done for this version of Rocky Software.
1.2.1. General Improvements
See below the general improvements that this new version brings:
• More detailed Intra-particle collision statistics where information can be drilled down to collisions
between each pair of particle groups.
• The possibility to inject particles and SPH elements at any time.
• Volumetric Inlet ennhancements:
– To set an initial velocity for particles and SPH elements injected by volumetric inlet.
– Periodically inject bulks of solid and fluid providind a storage optimization by importing a smaller
point cloud.
• Transient Point Cloud with time periodic:
– Now the time periodic can be used with the Transient Point Cloud, in this way the point cloud
field will be repeated for the number of periods you choose.
• The input variables support automization for orientation parameters
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
1.2.2. SPH Improvements
• Perfomance improvements on HTC calculations based on correlations.
• Now, when thermal model is enabled, HTC Calculator module calculates HTC values based on fluid
adjacent temperature and fluid-triangle heat transfer instead of using correlations, which generates
more accurate values.
• Several other improvements related to SPH simulation performance such as the neighbour search
and a optimized memory layout for SPH element data on GPU.
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
6 Published: 2025-02-12
Rocky Modules
1.2.3. Performance Improvements
• The performance of big triangles count simulations in multi-GPU was improved as well as the 3D
rendering of these cases.
1.2.4. User Experience Improvements
• Data tree elements have been reorganized so that they appear in the order they are generally used
when performing a simulation.
• Materials and Materials Interactions were merged to improve usability.
• New Study menu as starting point to add Regions of Interest and Point Clouds.
• Property User Process was renamed to Filter User Process.
• Frame of Reference was removed from the Particles Entity as its functionality was misleading the
users.
• The ability to extend the periodic motion stop time was added in this release and now when you
extend your simulation you can also extend the periodic stop time, without the need of start a
new simulation.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
1.2.5. Postprocessing Improvements
• Residence time calculations now have the start and stop time functionality.
• Polyhedron User Process can now be attached to motion frames.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
1.3. Rocky Modules
In this section you will find new Rocky Modules and main enhancements present in the 2025 R1 version.
Rocky New External Modules 2025 R1
• EMAG (External Module)
The Electromagnetic Coupling module enables you to add electromagnetic physics to the simulation,
such as:
– Electrostatic forces for particle-particle and particle-boundary interaction;
– Charging and discharging effects on particles due contact with boundary surfaces;
– Field forces on charged or dipole particles immersed on electric/magnetic fields.
This module replaces the: Electrostatic Force, Magnetic Force and Magnetic Force Ferrous and Tri-
bocharing External Modules.
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
Published: 2025-02-12 7
Ansys Rocky Release Notes
• Thornton-Ning Normal Force Module (External Module)
This module enables you to use the Thornton-Ning Normal Force for the Normal Forces used in the
project. In Rocky software, the Normal Force is used to calculate the normal components of the
contact forces, and will therefore affect particle-particle and particle-boundary interactions.
To download the Rocky External Modules, in the Download Center page on Ansys Customer Portal scroll
down to Add-ons Packages, and in Ansys Rocky click on SDK and Modules to download all modules
available
For more details see Rocky Module Manual.
Rocky New Internal Modules 2025 R1
• Multi-Body Dynamic (Internal Module)
This module replaces the FMU, Ansys Motion Coupling and Adams Coupling External Modules, in this
way with just one module you can import FMU into Rocky software.
Note:
To do the export from Ansys Motion™ Software and Adams you can use the Ansys Motion
Coupling and Adams Integration External Modules that continue available in the Additional
Package.
Note:
The FMU External Module is not available in the 2025 R1, since the Multi-Body Dynamic
Internal Module fully replaces this module functionalities for FMU import and export.
Rocky Internal Modules are embedeed in Rocky Software and can be activated in the Modules parameter
on Data Panel.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
1.4. Beta in This Release
In this section you will find the new beta features available in this release. Note that beta features have
not been fully tested and validated.
Ansys, Inc. makes no commitment to resolve defects reported against these prototype features. However,
your feedback will help us improve the overall quality of the product. We will not guarantee that the projects
using this beta feature will run successfully when the feature is finally released so you may, therefore, need
to modify the projects.
Important:
To use a beta feature the Experimental (Beta) Features checkbox must be enabled on the
Options | Preferences dialog.
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
8 Published: 2025-02-12
Resolved Issues and Limitations
• Divergence-Free SPH Incompressible Solver (DFSPH)
The new Divergence-Free Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (DFSPH) brings the IISPH solver improved
with a slightly different approach of density correction near boundaries in relation to the one already
implemented for IISPH . The main difference is that there is no need of approximating pressure at
the virtual ghost particles associated to boundary triangles. This reduces some operations and the
need to store a couple of auxiliary arrays.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
• New Pairwise Potential surface tension model
A new surface tension model that couple pairwise surface tension model with physical parameters,
replacing the SPH Pairwise Surface Tension external module.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
• New mapping method for 2-way unresolved coupling with Ansys Fluent software
New option on the UI with a new mapping method based on diffusivity equation and back-diffusion.
The diffusion solution mapping process solves a diffusion equation to perform the mapping and
smoothing of the volume fraction variables (particle volume fraction and particle volume fraction
variation due to particles entering and leaving the domain) and a pure advection equation to all
other quantities. This way all other mapped quantities (averaged particle quantities, momentum, and
energy sources, for example) are all distributed according to the volume fraction distribution.
The Back-Diffusion method uses the same approach as the pure-advection of the DEM quantities
applied in the Diffusion Solution mapping scheme, but uses the inverse of the volume fraction diffusion
velocity as the advection velocity, to compute a volume fraction weighted transport of the fluid
properties and flow quantities at the position where the particles are located.
For more details see Rocky User Manual.
1.5. PyRocky
PyRocky highlights and enhancements in 2025 R1.1 are listed below:
• Allow creation of nested User Processes.
• Expose RAExportTookit class.
• Expose PlaybackMacroFilefunction.
• Type Stubs to allow IDEs auto-complete to work with PyRocky objects.
For more details see Rocky for Developers.
1.6. Resolved Issues and Limitations
For a list of issues that have been resolved in Release 2025 R1.1, refer to the Resolved Issues and Limit-
ations document on the Ansys Help website.
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
Published: 2025-02-12 9
Ansys Rocky Release Notes
1.7. Rocky Software Installation
1.7.1. Automated Installer
In this release, Rocky software has easier installation, as it is inside the standard Ansys Automated
Installer.
For more details and installation guides see Ansys Automated Installer Guide.
1.7.2. Rocky Student Version
Following Ansys commitment to setting today's students up for success tomorrow, Ansys Rocky
software now has a student version, providing a free simulation software license to students at all
levels.
For more details on Rocky Student version limitations see Rocky User Manual.
For more details on Ansys for students see Ansys Student - Free Software Download.
Release 2025 R1.1 - © ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved. - Contains proprietary and confidential information
of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
10 Published: 2025-02-12
