Call for Participation: The CFD Experiment
The CFD community has mostly been sitting on the fence when it comes to cloud computing, doing nothing except debating its potential.
Or so say Wolfgang Gentzsch and Burak Yenier, organizers of The CFD Experiment. Their goal for this 3-month project is to bring together HPC providers, experts, and users to work through the application of cloud computing to real CFD problems. There is no cost to the end users (except time) and the end result will be a chronicle of the experience, presumably to identify areas for improvement to make cloud computing practical for CFD problems.
You can register for the CFD Experiment at their website.
- CFD Experiment website
Applications
CFD simulation of a ship hull with operating propeller performed by ACMA. Image from Maritime Executive.
- CFD simulations of operating propellers save ship owners time and money.
- CFD was used to analyze the drafting of multiple cyclists riding one behind the other. The study confirmed a 30-35% drag reduction on the second rider but also identified a 2-2.5% decrease for the front rider.
- Airflow through a room from an open door and out the windows was modeled in COMSOL.
- Creating a 3D vascular bifurcation in SolidWorks.
- TotalSim used OpenFOAM to compute a CFD simulation of an SUV towing a trailer.
A Desk Only a Mesh Generator Would Love
South Korean designer Bomi Park‘s wireframe desk proves that mesh generation truly (and sadly) isn’t an end unto itself. The image above is from Gizmodo.
News in Brief
- Code_Saturne, the open source CFD solver, has a new website.
- There’s a job opening for a CFD application engineer in San Francisco.
Awaglass = Hourglass Full of Bubbles
Take the sand out of an hourglass and fill it with a soapy liquid and you get the Awaglass. Probably a lot more suitable for us CFD types. Be sure to watch the video. This Japanese-made product was available on-line (“It does not measure time but enjoy the time…”) for a little over 5,000 yen but is now sold out.
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The drag reduction of the forward cyclyist caught my attention. For CFD, 2%-2.5% is a small difference. And, I also thought CFD would be challenged calculating the absolute value of drag. Granted, CFD does better capturing differences but… Anyway, I did ask some questions on the ANSYS blog. LOL, maybe I’m one of the few skeptical people out there. Maybe it’s time to hang up the skepticism hat and go with the flow! It will be hard. It’s kind of boring when things are predictable.
So here is one of the, of a few, things I don’t get. The author states “When the second cyclist is larger/wider/taller than the first one, the effect (reduction in air resistance for the first one) will be larger, and vice versa: A second cyclist who is smaller/shorter than the first will have an effect that is less than 2.5 percent.”
Yet, if I remember right (and this is for different configurations and Re numbers…), when a rear body is bigger it spreads out the streamlines, the flow accelerates, lower pressure results between the bodies, and the drag on the forward body increases. This should be easy to show (or disprove) with 2D and/or axisymmetric tandem bodies. Thanks John, you provided me with another idea for something to show on my web site!