Software

• Here’s this week’s “must click” link: WebGL-based fluid experiment. [Must have a “modern” browser and plenty of horsepower to enjoy the full experience.]
• Maybe our friends who know particle dynamics can validate whether mosh pits are more particulate or fluid.
• What is Caelus? [And how do you pronounce it? KAY-lus.] It’s a fork of OpenFOAM that’s been cleaned up, made easier to install, and supports Windows and Linux. [Full disclosure: The company behind Caelus includes a former Pointwise employee and the current Pointwise distributor for Australia.]
• CD-adapco released STAR-CCM+ v9.06 with a slew of new capabilities in performance, accuracy, and preprocessing.
• Richardson CFD (i.e. UFO-CFD) has a new website.
• Daat Research released Coolit v.14.
• Tech Soft 3D released HOOPS Exchange 2015 for 3D CAD data access.
• DEVELOP3D writes about the latest release of Magics 19 for working with faceted geometry (i.e. STL).
• CFD World wonders why OpenMDAO is open source.
• Fast Company is a bit passive-aggressive in their praise of Vim for text editing by labeling it an ’80s text editor. [Yes, I am trying to provoke a vi/Vim vs. Emacs debate.]

There’s a new release of PyFR, the open source Python framework. Image from pyfr.org. Click image for website.

Art

• Software is now able to determine a painting’s genre and influences 70% of the time.
• We would like to think that artist Janet Echelman uses high performance computing including CFD to design her “living breathing pieces that respond to the forces of nature – wind, water, and light.” (See image below.)

Janet Echelman, Line Drawing, 2006-2007. (Image from echelman.com. See link above.)

Events

• The proceedings of the 23rd International Meshing Roundtable are available online for free via Science Direct.
• You have only until 09 November to submit a design to be 3D printed for the i.materialise Holiday Gift Challenge.
• NAFEMS has begun a Benchmark Challenge Series beginning with one on stress in the center of a square plate. [Hopefully fluids challenges will come soon.]
• A workshop on Uncertainty Quantification in CFD will be held on 13 November in Delft.
• You have until 17 November to enter your simulation images in ANSYS’ 2015 Hall of Fame Competition.
• The proceedings from TFAWS 2014 (Thermal and Fluids Analysis Workshop) are available online. The 2015 event will be held in August at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Applications

• ESI’s CFD software was used as part of a fluid-structure interaction application for sun shades in Medina and Mecca.
• The Tame Aerodynamicist shares an introduction to the finite volume method.
• ANSYS shares a white paper on using CFD for simulating an exhaust gas recirculation cooler.
• Stanford University students are using Pointwise, SU2, and Tecplot 360 EX to help design their solar car.
• I seem to recall promising never to post an image of splashed paint again but… what would it look like if you put a Ferrari in a wind tunnel and sprayed it with UV paint? The image below and the ones at the link seem to be a mashup of the best-of and worst-of CFD visualizations.

Fabien Oefner, Ferrari California T. Image from PetaPixel. See link above.

People

• Exa seeks to hire a Senior Software Engineer – CFD Software Development.
• Congratulations to Keith Martin who’s graduating as a Fellow of the Hydro Research Foundation and did CFD research.

Hardware

• I am not a hardware guy, but some people think Soft Machine’s Variable Instruction Set Computing (VISC) could offer great performance improvements.
• NASA’s CFD benchmarks, the NAS Parallel Benchmarks, are used to test the performance of various chipsets.
• Because the Call for Papers deadline has already past all we can do now is wait to read the special issue of Computers and Electrical Engineering on Optimization of Parallel Scientific Applications with Accelerated HPC.
• You can read a little about XFLOW CFD on Rescale’s cloud-based HPC systems.

Congratulations to CEI for the use of EnSight to create the cover image of Nature magazine. Click image for article.

Sculpting via 3D Printing

Artist Moto Waganari wants to create something tangible yet virtual, something solid yet transparent, something that couldn’t be made by hand. His 3D printed sculptures of wireframe humans and other objects are the result. Check out the link for more images and a video.

Moto Waganari, 3D printed sculpture. Image from Visual News.

This reminds me that we at Pointwise need to finalize and release the 3D printing plugin that lets you print your mesh.