News

• Nominations are sought for awards in the field of high performance computing to be announced at SC13, the supercomputing conference.
• Market research firm Aberdeen Group is offering free access to its research reports. Registration is required and in exchange for free access your email address is shared with Aberdeen Groups sponsors who may contact you by email regarding your research interests. Searching their reports for the term “CFD” yields 4 results, the most recent from January 2012.
• If you are concerned about latency issues when using CFD in the cloud, researchers at the University of Bonn say that Amazon’s EC2 is well suited for moderately sized CFD computations using up to 64 cores.
• Also on the topic of CAE in the cloud, this blog post from CyDesign asks whether the cloud is safe for CAE.
• Engineering students get a concrete airplane into the air – briefly. [I’m not certain CFD would’ve helped.]
• CEI Software, makers of EnSight, are seeking to hire a computer systems administrator.
• The deadline for submitting a poster to TFAWS has been extended to 7 June.
• CD-adapco’s academic newsletter for May 2013 is now available and includes a link to an interesting paper on the validity of commercial CFD codes for low-budget race car development.
• ANSYS offers three valuable resources – blog post, white paper, and technical paper (registration required for the paper) – on turbulence modeling [a field of study that makes astrology look respectable].

Streamlines around and surface pressure on the Guggenheim Museum. Image from NInsight, Inc. and ANSYS.

Software

• You’ve seen the previews, now get the real thing. Symscape released Caedium v5.0 with Python scripting, polyhedral meshing, and plenty more.
• Beta CAE released ANSA and μETA v14.1.1.
• Friendship Systems announced the release of CAESES, a free version of their FRIENDSHIP-Framework product for “seamless integration of CAD and CFD.” They also released FFW 3.0.5.
• Version 6.4 of Rheolef, an “efficient C++ finite element environment” (freely available under GPL).

Applications

Mesh for a multi-story building simulation from the paper cited below.

• Coupled Outdoor and Indoor Airflow Prediction for Buildings Using CFD
• From Learn CAx comes mathematical treatments in CFD modeling of multiphase flows.
• The McLaren 50 12C, of which only 50 will be built including the Spider model, features a CFD-optimized front bumper. [I wish I could get more excited about this but I’m not a car guy.]

The McLaren 50 12C. Image from carpages.co.uk.

Faceted Faces

Artist David Mesguich merges the digital and analog words with his oversize, faceted sculptures of human faces. These polypropylene, painted forms have been installed in urban spaces throughout Paris as well as museums and other indoor locations. For more on the artist, visit his website at davidmesguich.com. As first seen on Visual News.

Sculpture by David Mesguich