This week’s post is full of words not normally associated with CFD like “ludicrously” and “orange juice” plus your usual first month of the new year predictions, product releases, conferences and initiatives. [Image credit for the creepy bunny goes to Meshmixer.]

Reading

• Virtually all of the presentations from the Future CFD Technologies workshop (held earlier this month prior to AIAA SciTech) have been posted on the workshop’s website.
• The ASSESS Initiative (a consortium-like effort to “significantly expand the use and benefit of software tools for model-based analysis, simulation, and systems engineering in the engineering applications domain”) is now open for member enrollment. Members have access to all ASSESS work products (i.e. reports) and discounts on registration for the annual Congress. [Full disclosure: I am a member and serve on a working group.]
  • Read the membership program announcement on Ten Links.
  • Or jump right to the enrollment form at assessinitiative.com.
• Looking forward into 2018, Monica Schnitger sees optimization and data everywhere – among other things.

Solstice Tree, a t-shirt design from woot.com.

Pointwise News

• We’re seeking summer interns for our technical support, product development, and applied research teams. Read more on our website and send us your cover letter and resume.
• Project Geode, our effort to share with CFD solvers (and other consumers of mesh and geometry) the NURBS evaluators from our geometry kernel to facilitate mesh adaptation, is now in beta test.

Applications & More

• CFD was used to balance safety, aerodynamics, and ventilation for the soon-to-be-released Utopia cycling helmet.
• Always an interesting read, the I, Cringely blog offers two technology predictions for 2018 including one about how important Windows is to Microsoft.
• Onshape introduces Parametric Modeling 2.0 on the 30th anniversary of Parametric Modeling 1.0.
• Marine designers used CFD to optimize a tanker ship to carry orange juice [emphasis mine].
• Boeing contributed their simulation expertise to the design of the land-based Giant Magellan Telescope which is predicted to have better resolution than Hubble. [In which we see a reference to the CFD Vision 2030 study.]

From SIMULIA’s blog post Simulations Help Evaluate Safety and Stability of Structures. Included here for reasons that should be obvious. Image from blogs.3ds.com.

Software & More

• Tech Soft 3D released HOOPS Exchange 2018 for CAD data interoperability.
• Tecplot 360 is now available in India through new partner KFour Metrics. [Full disclosure: KFour Metrics is Pointwise’s distributor in India.]
• Speaking of Tecplot, you might want to consider using it with your COMSOL simulations.
• Beta CAE‘s software suite v18.1.0 includes a new annotation tool among other features (via engineering.com).
• Meshmixer 3.4 is now available.
• “Fine meshes are to blame for the slow speed of simulations.” So begins an article describing SIMSOLID Professional and its “ludicrously fast” technology.

Faces, Faces, and More Faces

So I was googling for “polyhedral cells” the other day and ran across this monstrosity: a poly with 1800 faces from robertlovespi.net. First, I dare you to look away. Second, I’m wondering whether those CFD solvers with polyhedral cell support could handle this beast. It’s like agglomerating your entire mesh into one cell. But is sure is purdy.