STAR Global 2012 – Call for Papers

CD-adapco has issued a call for papers for their STAR Global Conference 2012 to be held in The Netherlands on 21-22 March 2012.  They are seeking “success stories” from users of their STAR-CCM+, STAR-CD, and other software products.

The STAR Global Conference is a new event from CD-adapco and replaces the STAR European and STAR American Conferences.

• Call for Papers

Win an iPad 2 in CD-adapco’s Calendar Contest

CD-adapco is seeking images for its 2012 calendar contest.  The winner of the “most attractive and informative simulation post-processing” will receive an iPad2.

• Calendar Contest

Exa Files for IPO

Exa Corporation, makers of the lattice Boltzmann-based PowerFLOW CFD software, have filed for an initial public offering (IPO) seeking a valuation of about $86 million.  Their revenue for the 12-month period ending 31 Jan 2011 was $37.7 million.

• News via Schnitger Corp.

FE-DESIGN Adds STAR-CCM+ Support to TOSCA

FE-DESIGN added a native STAR-CCM+ interface to their TOSCA Fluid software for optimizing channel flows for pressure loss.  Also included in the 2.2.0 release of TOSCA Fluid are an upgraded ANSYS Fluent interface, improved smoothing algorithms, and improvement of the ability to get optimized results back into the CFD model.

• FE-DESIGN’s announcement

Project Falcon for Autodesk Alias

Autodesk Labs has made available Project Falcon, an add-on for their Alias industrial design software.  Project Falcon is billed as a “wind tunnel simulator” for investigation of aerodynamic performance including “resultant airflow/pressure.”

Commentary: Some people are leery of analysis in CAD software and Alias represents something much farther up the food chain.  How will folks feel about this?  More importantly, Project Falcon includes “revolutionary automatic meshing technology that can handle any geometry at any stage of design.”  I’d like to learn more.

• Project Falcon

Pointwise Launched the Meshy Award Contest

Pointwise announced a new event for this autumn’s Pointwise User Group Meeting 2011: The Meshy Award.  We are seeking images of awesome grids generated in either Pointwise or Gridgen.  The winner of the Meshy Award will be announced at the Pointwise UGM in Fort Worth on 9 Nov 2011.

• The Meshy Award

Genovation Cars Receives Grant for CFD Validation

Genovation Cars, a designer of “green” automobiles, has received a $135,000 grant for wind tunnel testing intended to validate the CFD simulations of their G2 electric car.  Testing will be performed at the University of Maryland’s Glenn L. Martin wind tunnel.

• announcement

Award Winning Science Videos from SciDAC

Wired is hosting ten award-winning videos from the Dept. of Energy’s Visualization Night, part of their annual Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) event.  The winners include three fluid dynamics visualizations of blood flow, Mach 3 flow in a carbon-capturing turbine, and wind farm turbulence.

• Wired’s science videos

Brief News & Events

• Tetra 4D’s 3D PDF Converter v3.2 supports the latest 3D major CAD formats.
• BRL-CAD announced the winner of their logo contest.  (Comment: I prefer the moose-inspired design.)
• Three-dimensional representation of the Human Arterial Tree (from 2005)
• Spatial’s 3D Insider Summit will be held 11-12 Oct 2011 in Westminster, CO.
• Brief video of airflow over a skier‘s head done with CFdesign.
• Mentor Graphics is hosting a webinar on The ROI of Concurrent Design with CFD on 27 Sep 2011.
• Swift Engineering chose Platform HPC and Cray’s computers to enhance their CFD capabilities.

Fun with Fluid Dynamics

Enjoy this interactive javascript fluid dynamics app from dhteumeuleu.