Greetings from snowy and icy Fort Worth, Texas.

Software

• Teplot Chorus 2015 Release 1 was launched and offers order of magnitude reductions in processing time due to incorporation of the company’s SZL technology.
• CD-adapco launched STAR-CCM+ v10.02, a major new release including enhanced interaction with CAD, an improved results viewer, and mesh refinement for wakes.
• DHCAE Tools launched the CastNet v4 GUI framework for OpenFOAM.
• ANSYS Fluent 16.0 and FieldView are now compatible at the HPC parallel level.

Events

• The 15th International Workshop on the Physics of Compressible Turbulent Mixing will be held on 10-15 July 2016 in Sydney, Australia.
• Dassault Systemes announced the keynote speaker for their 2015 SIMULIA Community Conference.

News

• Mentor Graphics is accepting nominations until 30 April 2015 for the first Don Miller Award for Excellence in System Level Thermo-Fluid Design.
• Our friends at ANSYS continue to exhibit strong financial performance, reporting FY 2014 revenue of $936 million, a 10% year-over-year growth.

Meshing

The new overset Examine diagnostic in Pointwise shows fringe/donor volume ratio in this example of an aircraft wing. See link below.

• Pointwise released Pointwise V17.3 which includes integration with overset grid assembly.
• CFX Berlin released TwinMesh 2015 for structured grid generation for rotating machines [if I translated from German correctly].
• Strong Simulation Consulting shares tips on getting better prism layers from Fluent meshing.
• CFD Associates offers tips on meshing small gaps.
• ANSYS shares videos on various meshing strategies.

Applications

• TimkenSteel is using ANSYS’ CFD software to simulate heat treating.
• CFD was used to aid the design of an airship.
• Autodesk Labs released an update (freely available) to Project Memento, their toolset for manipulating meshes for digital fabrication.

CFD Simulation of a Royal Enfield Gear Box with FLOW-3D. Simulation performed by XC Engineering. Click image for video.

The Cloud

• OnShape’s Jon Hirschtick continues to get a lot of press [deservedly so] as the company continues to talk more and more about their new approach to cloud-based CAD which promises no installs, no downloads, use on any device, and ease of use. From this article I infer that “ease of use” refers to installation, license management, and maintenance of the software, not necessarily how easy it is to make the software do things. Which is enlightening because I don’t see any reason why cloud-based software should necessarily be any easier to use than desktop software. Part 2 of the article is here.
• Has anyone tried MyCadbox for online viewing of your CAD models? It’s currently in beta with 7 days of free use.
• And for simulation in the cloud there’s SimForDesign.

Computing

• Computers need not be all about integrated circuits. In what might be an interesting parallel for CFD, some day you might be using a fluidic computer with bubble logic. Or what about ternary instead of binary logic? Read more about unconventional computing concepts.
• But if you prefer your computers to be all electrical, consider a future in which transistors are made from single-atom-thick layer of silicene. [From our friends at the Univ. of Texas.]
• Here’s a video on how the European DEEP-ER project is working toward exascale computing.

Meshing Has Always Been a Bridge

Londoners may soon experience a highly faceted structure if the entries in the Nine Elms to Pimlico Bridge Competition are any indication. I realize that many bridge structures have certain faceted aspects, but some of these designs including the ones illustrated below are truly mesh-like. Click through to the gallery to see all the entries.

Bonus: Computer simulations prove the optimal length of eyelashes (to keep dirt out of the eye) is one-third the width of the eye.

Update: The caption for the image of the video by XC Engineering showing their FLOW-3D solution for a gear box was inadvertently left off the original post. This omission was corrected on 19 Mar 2015.