3D Mesh Viewer for iPad and iPhone

Those of you with an iPad or an iPhone and a desire to show off your meshes may want to consider MeshLab for iOS.  This newly released app reads PLY, STL, OBJ, and OFF formats, and displays meshes as points or either flat or smooth shaded polygons.

• MeshLab for iOS
• Video preview

The Science of Fluid Sims

If you’re curious about the intersection of traditional CFD and fluid simulations for visual effects in films, The Science of Fluid Sims on fxguide.com provides a great snapshot of the current state of the art.  Right from the start the article advises “Unfortunately, most methods for real world CFD are needlessly complex for visual effects fluid sims and scale poorly.”  A history of fluid visual effects is provided followed by some basic information about fluid dynamics (the target audience for the article is visual effects designers, not necessarily CFD engineers).  There’s a good presentation of the tradeoffs of fluid sims and, not surprisingly, high fidelity is low on their list.  (Realism is not.)  An area cited for further research is speed of the calculations – namely parallel and GPU.  All in all a nice view of CFD from a different perspective and the videos are well worth watching.

• The Science of Fluid Sims

Altair Announces 2-Year Internship Opportunities

Altair Engineering announced an opportunity for engineering students to participate in a paid internship for summers 2012 and 2013.  Altair is seeking students who’ll be completing their software year in spring 2012 and who are pursuing concentrations in mechanical, civil, or aerospace engineering.

• Altair internships

News & Notes

• Altair has started a blog, Simulate to Innovate.
• The 440-page book, Numerical Simulations – Examples and Applications in Computational Fluid Dynamics, is freely available as a PDF for download.
• Electronics thermal management by Daat Research.
• SALOME v5.1.6 was released.
• Alden Research Lab in Holden, MA has a job opening for a CFD engineer.

Characteristics of Vortex Formation and Thrust Performance in Drag-Based Paddling Propulsion

In other words, what’s the optimum shape of a duck’s foot?  Apparently it all comes down to spanwise flow.