On Validation

This week’s must-read article comes from Bill Rider on the The Regularized Singularity blog: Good Validation Practices are our Greatest Opportunity to Advance Modeling and Simulation. In it he makes the case that chasing FLOPS at this stage in simulation’s maturity is foolhardy while validation is the proverbial low-hanging fruit.

News & Events

• Everyone has heard this news by now so while it might appear to be anti-climactic, ANSYS has acquired CEI, makers of the EnSight CFD visualization and post-processing software. You can read the details from many sources.
  • EnSight.com
  • ANSYS
  • Digital Engineering
  • Monica Schnitger
  • ENGINEERING.com
• Speaking of EnSight, their EnSight European User Meeting will be in Munich on 30 Nov – 01 Dec and their EnSight Japan User Meeting will be in Tokyo on 27 October.
• The Numeca International User Meeting 2017 will be 13-15 November in Brussels.
• Tech-Clarity invites you to answer their survey question “What Skills Do You Wish Engineering Graduates Had?” Respondents are eligible for a drawing for an Amazon gift card. [I recommend you take the survey. This is an important topic.]
  • [My first reaction to this question was “strong communication skills, both written and verbal.” Engineers spend more time writing and talking (presenting) than students think.]
  • [My second reaction was to the word “skills” and my reaction was justified somewhat by questions in the survey. A college of engineering is not a trade school. Colleges should teach students the fundamentals of various engineering sub-disciplines in addition to teaching them how to learn. Employers can train them on skills.]
• Final presentations from the 1st AIAA Geometry and Mesh Generation Workshop are now available for download from the workshop website.

How about some rider-specific CFD for cycling? CFD by STAC Performance. Image from SlowTwitch.com.

From Pointwise

• Two members of our Applied Research team will be at the U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (including the Symposium on Trends in Unstructured Mesh Generation, aka MeshTrends) in Montreal next week. If you’ll also be attending, we invite you to attend their presentations.
  • Node Creation for Isotropic Refinement of Tetrahedral Meshes is about a physics-based node insertion method that’s applicable to both static and adaptive meshing.
  • A Practical Approach to Curving Meshes for Realistic Geometries presents the latest advancements in our techniques for generating high-order meshes.
• We’ll be taking Pointwise on the road later this year for two, day-long workshops: Efficient Meshing with Pointwise.
  • College Park, Maryland on 22 August
  • Daejeon, Korea on 16 October

Software

• HOPR is an open-source project for high-order mesh generation.
• Gismo is an open-source Grasshopper plugin for “GIS environmental analysis.” It looks like it could be used to prepare geometry for CFD simulations of an urban environment.
  • An example of such – albeit not using Gismo – can be seen here.
• SCORG is a mesh generator for screw compressors, expanders, pumps, and motors.
• OpenCFD released OpenFOAM v1706 with new overset mesh functionality and more.
• Introducing the Tdyn CFD+HT CFD solver from Compass.
• Introducing Trampo, “next-gen cloud computing for STAR-CCM+ users.”

An example of GridPro’s new nesting technique. Image from PDC.

Applications, Jobs, and More

• CFD was used in simulating the aerodynamics of the upcoming Kia Stinger.
• From the world of cycling is this application of CFD to carbon fiber wheels.
• Here’s Visualizing Data’s best of the visualization web for May 2017.
• Penn State University seeks to hire a research and development engineer in CFD.
• The Austrian Institute of Technology has an open position for CFD investigation of metallurgical processes.
• Renault Sport Racing seeks a fluids-thermal CFD engineer.

Facets in Motion

An alert reader pointed me to Kouhei Nakama’s video Makin’ Moves in which the dancers get the mesh treatment at about the 2-minute mark.

Kouhei Nakama, screen capture from Makin’ Moves. See link above.

Lest you think this is a new concept, consider the photo below from 1883 that was created as part of a study of human walking motion by putting a slotted, rotating disk in front of a camera lens as someone walked past.

Etienne-Jules Marey, Chronophotograph, 1883. Image from Futility Closet. See link above.

Marey’s Chronophotograph supposedly inspired Marcel Duchamp’s fantastic Nude Descending a Staircase about which he said “My aim was a static representation of movement.” It’s important [to me] to share this Duchamp painting to offset his notoriety for Fountain, a porcelain urinal.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912. Image from Futility Closet. See link above.

Bonus: Mathematicians have derived the governing fluid mechanics for optimizing your daily cup of coffee accounting for 20 parameters including density, porosity, and height of the ground coffee bed. Read a brief summary from Discover or the full paper from SIAM.