Cloud

• CONSELF Cloud Simulation v2.9 was released with improvements in hex meshing, modal displacement calculations, and more.
• ENGINEERING.com wrote a bit about Envenio’s cloud-based delivery of EXN/Aero and Pointwise.
• CCTech developed their simulationHub cloud-based CFD platform using Autodesk’s Forge API.

Not Cloud

• T-Splines’ founder has evolved his Isogeometrix company into Coreform at which isogeometric analysis software for FEA will be developed.
• SpaceX is developing their own (currently unnamed) CFD solver for rockets.
• CRAFT Tech released CRUNCH CFD Version 3.2 with new turbulence and roughness models and more.
• Here’s a nice intro video to CFD simulation (FloEFD) in Solid Edge.

Not strictly CFD (although I’m willing to bet CFD was and will be involved), but DARPA selected Boeing’s design for their Experimental Spaceplane project. Image from DARPA.

Meshing, Viz, Computing – Oh My

• SimScale answers the question “What is a mesh?“
• Visualizing Data published their best of the visualization web for March 2017.
• This is interesting. Current petascale computers have a “mean time between failure” of about 8 hours and extrapolating that to exascale yields a MTBF of minutes. Therefore, your CFD solver had better be fault tolerant which is exactly what the ExaFLOW project is working on.

Events

• You have until June 2nd to submit an abstract for TFAWS, the Fluids and Thermal Analysis Workshop.
• The 33rd International CAE Conference and Expo will be held 6-7 November in Vicenza, Italy.
• The 2nd International Conference on CFD in Research and Industry will be held on 3-4 August 2017 in Songkhla, Thailand.

Applications

Was it trickery? How aerodynamics contributed to the attempt to break the 2-hour marathon time. Image from Siemens PLM. See link below to full article.

• In what might be one of the most widely read articles involving a CFD application, the folks at Siemens PLM (nee CD-adapco) did a CFD analysis with STAR-CCM+ of the recent attempt that just missed breaking the marathon 2-hour time. See image above.
• Monica Schnitger thinks it’s gonna be a good year for CAE. But also wishes vendors would report number of licenses sold in addition to revenue in order to get a better feel for the nascent and uneven transition to subscriptions.
• Digital Engineering wrote an in-depth article on the use of CAE for the America’s Cup.

Convergent Science shares applications of CONVERGE CFD to gas turbine type flowfields.  This image of a DLR combustor is from convergecfd.com where you can read the full article.

Jobs

• Flow Science has several job openings including CFD Engineer and Sales Engineer.
• The Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology has an open PhD position in CFD as applied to biomass.
• Applied CCM seeks a CFD Modeller.

Is a Mesh Really There if Nothing’s On It?

Edoardo Tresoldi was included in Forbes’ list of 30 influential European artists under the age of 30 and his installations created from wire mesh at architectural scale make it easy to see why.

As originally seen by me on Colossal, Tresoldi’s work is a paradoxical combination of geometry and formlessness, heft and ephemerality. From his biography, his use of mesh “transcends space time dimension and narrates a dialog between Art and World” which reveals itself in “the fade-out of physical limitations.” His work Lift (shown lit and viewed from below in the following image) really caught my eye.

Do not missed Tresoldi’s website where many of his mesh works are revealed.

Edoardo Tresoldi, Lift (a temporary installation in Huntington, UK). See link above.

Bonus: How Women Mentors Make a Difference in Engineering, from The Atlantic.

Just Silly: Structured water? You mean I’ve been drinking unstructured water all this time?

P.S. There won’t be a This Week in CFD next Friday as I’ll be on my way to Denver to participate in the AIAA 1st Geometry and Mesh Generation Workshop being held the weekend prior to the AIAA Aviation Forum and Expo. There’s still time to register and attend for what’s certain to be more geometry modeling and meshing discussion you’ve ever had on a weekend.