News & Events

• In this article about Altair‘s 30th anniversary we learn that a) 40% of their clients are in the automotive industry, b) they’ll bring in about $300 million this year, and c) an IPO may or may not be in their future.
• Did you know there’s an OpenFOAM Q&A site on Stack Exchange?
• Proceedings from the FLOW-3D European Users Conference are now available online.
• Intelligent Light shares a bit about their presentation from PAR CFD 2015.

An illustration of new CAD capabilities coming in STAR-CCM+ v10.04. Image from CD-adapco. See link below.

Software

• MoFEM v0.2.2, a C++ library for FEA methods, is now avaiable.
• Another example of “way out there” user interface technology is Google’s Soli, which uses 60 GHz radar to track sub-millimeter motion (i.e. a highly accurate gesture interface). [My first reaction was to wonder whether it detected “micro changes in air density.” Only fans of Alien will get that reference.]
• Here’s another preview of new features coming in STAR-CCM+ v10.04, this time involving CAD data. (See image above.)

Applications & Jobs

• They don’t know where, when or how but research published in Notices of the American Mathematical Society used CFD to conclude that flight MH-370 crashed into the ocean in a near vertical dive. [The article’s use of the word “solved” in its headline is laughable.]
• LR Senergy was awarded a patent on a CFD-based method for simulating an entire gas/oil well for optimization called Wellscope.
• TotalSim seeks an experienced CFD engineer with OpenFOAM experience in the UK.

Tessellated Wood

An alert reader (unfortunately I deleted their original message) pointed me to Jay Mantri‘s online photo blog and this untitled photograph of a stack of lumber. Despite not being a fan of photography in general, I kinda like this natural tessellation.

Jay Mantri, Untitled, 2015

Bonus Section

Because I’ll be at AIAA Aviation in Dallas virtually all of next week, there won’t be a This Week in CFD post next Friday. (AIAA says they’re going to make me a “Social Media Ambassador” so watch for tweets and other social sharing from me tagged #aiaaAviation.) To help you avoid withdrawal, enjoy this plethora of “stupid fluid tricks.”

Ruslan Kkasanov created a follow-up to his video from two years ago and now explores the interaction of ink, oil, soap and glitter: Odyssey.

Ruslan Khasonov, Odyssey. Image from Colossal. See link above.

Clemens Wirth used a special rotatable set and camera rig to film, Gravity, that’s less disorienting than you’d think and is instead full of simple wonderment.

Clemens Wirth, Gravity. Image from Colossal. See link above.

What happened when John Edmark 3D printed sculptures, spun them, and filmed them with a strobe? Magic. Blooms.

John Edmark, Blooms. Screen capture from Vimeo. See link above.

If you prefer to interact with your fluid art rather than just look at it, give Fluid & Particles in WebGL a try. Source code available.

George Corney, Fluid & Particles in WebGL. See link above.