News in Brief

• In case you missed it here and other places, a researcher claims to proven the existence of a strong and unique solution to the Navier-Stokes equations. Only time [and people much smarter than I] will tell whether he will claim the $1 million reward from the Clay Mathematics Institute.
• There’s an opening for a Senior Scientist – Fire/Combustion/CFD Modeling in Norwood, Massachusetts.
• Why would anyone say no to an employee who comes forward and requests support for attending a conference?
• CD-adapco has an opening for a Project Manager in Nürnberg, Germany.
• Someone is seeking a CFD Team Lead in Dearborn, Michigan.

Applications

ANSYS HoF Best in Show (Corporate) winner Admedes Schuessler GmbH. Image from ANSYS.

• ANSYS announced their Hall of Fame winners. [Beautiful stuff. Some of these should be posted on Twitter for #SimulationFriday.]
• Boeing’s high- and low-speed wind tunnel testing of the 777X will serve many purposes including CFD validation.

One Engineer’s Myth Is Another Engineer’s Reality

HiTech CFD sees the world through rose-colored glasses in their article 3 Finger-Thumping Myths of CFD and the Realities Associated with It. I applaud their optimism but still have minor, nagging issues with their analysis.

You can’t simply wish away recent survey results that indicate 58% of engineers aren’t prepared for running CFD. Keeping in mind the difference between understanding fluid dynamics and running a CFD code, and acknowledging that CFD codes are getting easier to run every day the data indicates that engineers still find CFD daunting. The core question is “Why?”

There are many specific instances (i.e. combinations of application, software, and user) that you can cite for which CFD can be effectively applied in a timely manner.  There are probably many more instances where CFD is still time intensive – both for the two reasons cited in their article (CAD and mesh) but also compute time for the solver. While it is true that on certain computers you can get a CFD code to converge in a day/hour/minute, it does you no good if you don’t have access to that computer. This goes back to William Gibson’s quote: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

It is true that the performance of any product that operates in a fluid environment can benefit from CFD in the sense that the performance can be improved and better understood. The real question is whether CFD simulation is cost-effective for the design of any fluid-surrounded product (e.g. bathtub drains). Sometimes good enough is precisely that. And I believe that we in the CFD business suffer from a bit of FEA jealousy. We wish our market was as big as the one for engineers who need to know whether their design will break under mechanical load.

Events

• CD-adapco announced David Breashears, “climber, adventurer, and filmmaker,” as the keynote speaker for the STAR Global Conference 2014.
• CIMdata’s summary of the 3rd Annual NX CAE Symposium draws a line in the sand with respect to CAD-embedded versus independent CAE tools. “CIMdata suggests that end users should question a best-of-breed strategy for choosing CAE applications, where the integration and data management issues fall largely on the end-user.” The event’s presentations are available for viewing and download (registration required).
• The 9th OpenFOAM Workshop (OFW2014) will be held on 23-26 June 2014 in Zagreb, Croatia.
• VKI announced the Research Master in Fluid Dynamics, a 1-year course.

Software

Simulation results from Autodesk Flow Design. Image from Autodesk.

• Autodesk has rebranded Project Falcon as Flow Design.
• Applied Math Modeling announced the release of CoolSim 4.2. The software includes a new modeling environment that aids in the concurrent running of multiple configurations.
• SpaceClaim seeks beta testers of its 3D collaboration product code-named Connect. Just watch the video and you’ll see what it can do. According to SpaceClaim, their top category of customer requests is “collaboration tools” – hence Connect. [If anything in the CAD world can inspire Apple-like fandom, SpaceClaim is right up there near the top.]
• Similarly, the “GitHub for 3D” GrabCAD Workbench Pro is about to exit beta.
• Rescale certified MSC Nastran and two other MSC products and joined MSC Software’s Technology Partner Program.
• ParaView 4.1.0 (open source, scientific visualization) is now available for download.

Science Before Art

The winners of Princeton’s annual Art of Science competition have been posted online and they are quick to point out that this is not art for art’s sake but art that results from scientific inquiry.

The two images below struck me with their visual similarity despite representing completely different physical phenomena.

Bridging the Gap, People’s Second Place Winner, Wexler and Stone. Liquids in a thin gap between solids. Image from Princeton.

Light Eddies, Nahmias and Prucnal, neuron simulation showing a laser’s phase space. Image from Princeton.