Theory
An inlet is a patch on the outer skin where flow (and, with acoustics, sound) enters. Each inlet has its own boundary-condition card on the Boundary Conditions step (velocity, mass or volume flow, temperature, turbulence, acoustic excitation) and its own column in the results (pressure drop per inlet, branch pressure drops, transmission loss per inlet).
One inlet may consist of several CAD faces, for example a port split into two halves in the CAD; assign all of them to the same inlet_N. Two pipes that each carry their own flow are two inlets.
The export ("Assign patches & export") rejects the assignment unless exactly this number of inlet patches have faces. With several inlets, the pressure drop is the mass-flow-weighted total pressure over all inlets minus that over all outlets.
Default and rule
- Default
- 1
- Rule
1.
- Source
The patch naming and the count check are defined by the program's patch assignment.
Valid range integer >= 1
Values
Whole numbers from 1. Lowering the number removes the higher inlet names from the lists; faces assigned to them must be reassigned before exporting.
Replaced model
When a model is replaced, an inlet of the old model that no longer has any face blocks meshing and running until it is reassigned or its settings are removed. Reducing the number of inlets deliberately does not count as such a loss.