News

• You have until 30 June to submit your entry for the first FloEFD Frontloading CFD Award.
• Abstracts for ESI’s 4th Annual OpenFOAM User Conference are due 30 June. Also noted, they will be previewing overset capabilities due for release in 2017.
• Is there a Moore’s Law for mesh elements? This article from Desktop Engineering says “no” for structural mechanics but leaves the door open for CFD. Anyone care to review several years of meshes and report the results?
• Exa‘s performance during the first quarter yielded some interesting nuggets, as per industry analyst Monica Schnitger. [IMO, we should all take an interest in Exa because they are the only publicly traded pure CFD company (at least that I’m aware of).]
  • Total revenue was $16.8 million, with license revenue up 15%.
  • All of Exa’s project work is now done via ExaCLOUD and the implication was that new customers who start with project work use the cloud-based product once they decide to license (as opposed to the desktop product).
  • It was reported that Exa’s cloud and desktop products are priced and structured the same way.

Applications

6SigmaET and Rescale are partnering on thermal simulation in the cloud. Image from Eureka Magazine. Click image for article.

• Always check your propellers for damages [sic] and balance before flight, or so says this news item for Master Airscrew‘s CFD-designed and pre-balanced drone propellers.
• CFD helps design air filtration units for computer labs and classrooms.
• Something about a computer optimized for cloud-based HPC applications like CFD.
• Symbolic IO announced “computationally defined” computer storage.
• Something that sounds similar is IBM’s phase-change storage which is supposedly 50 times faster than flash storage.

From Pointwise

• There’s still time to participate in the AIAA survey on the topic of geometry handling and mesh generation for CFD. The results will be used as part of a panel discussion on open issues in meshing at AIAA Aviation. It should only take you 5-10 minutes to complete the survey so please participate today if you haven’t done so already. Share it with your friends too.
• What’s the best part of the Pointwise User Group Meeting? There are many, but mine is recognizing the winner of The Meshy Award. Candidates are due 05 August.

Simulation of grilling a steak. Click image for more info.

Software

• MSC Software released Nastran and Patran 2016.
• These tips on how to read a scientific paper range from “start with the abstract” to “re-derive everything yourself.”
• Friendship Systems (the CAESES people) are partnering with R&D CFD to advance simulation of internal combustion engines.
• Also, CAESES 4.1.1 was released.

Animated Meshes

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of animation, especially black and white line drawing. When you combine that with a hint of faceting or polygonal play, you’ve got me hooked. Such is the case with Daniel Savage’s video Look-See that I first encountered on Cartoon Brew. You can read about how he made it and see more of his work.

Daniel Savage’s video captures how it feels sometimes when you’re meshing. Click image for video.

Bonus: This really has nothing to do with meshing or CFD but a student’s work on designing 3-sided dice (“trice“) is really innovative.