This first edition of This Week in CFD for 2018 begins with a must-read article with some prognostication about what the year ahead may bring and a must-watch video of a quad-copter simulation. (Image credit: ANSYS Discovery Live from Engineering.com)

Must Read: Simulation in 2018

• Engineering.com’s article Engineering Simulation Software in 2018 and Beyond is a great read to start the year. From the deep cast of experts interviewed to the broad range of topics covered, if nothing else it’ll make you ponder your own opinions about what the coming year may bring. [In which we are delighted to read “Let’s mesh this crystal ball, shall we?”]
  • New tech, sim apps, and democratization.
  • “non-denial licensing”
  • Digital twin, additive manufacturing, and the cloud.
  • Much, much more.
• Really, you must read that article.

Software

2nd Order LES simulation comparing Q-criterion (color) with Schlieren (gray) from hoMusic. Image from hocfd.com. See link below.

• The 13th OpenFOAM Workshop will be held in Shanghai on 24-29 June 2018.
• An update on the OpenFOAM Foundation’s fund raising campaign for 2018: as of the end of 2017 they’ve raised half of their €250,000 goal.
• OpenFOAM 1712 was released and includes integration with cfMesh.
• Beta CAE released v18.1.0 of their software suite.
• Numeca released Hexpress v7.1.
• New company, new product: hoCFD introduces high-order LES CFD code hoMusic. [I HOpe to have more details on this soon.]
• Rescale reported grew 30% month-over-month throughout 2017 such that some consider it to be the fastest growing enterprise software company.
• OpenVSP v3.15.0 was released for parametric aircraft geometry generation.

Applications

Screen capture from a fantastic video of a quad-copter simulation performed at NASA. Image from nasa.gov. See link below.

• A CFD simulation of a quad copter was performed at NASA using the OVERFLOW solver and a Chimera Grid Tools mesh in order to evaluate strategies for minimizing noise. A video visualization of Q-criterion (see image above) is truly something to behold.
• SolidWorks Flow Simulation is being used to managing the thermal environment of electronics built to work outdoors.
• New Challenges in Grid Generation and Adaptivity for Scientific Computing might be a bit of a misnomer since it’s a compilation of papers from a 2013 conference. However, any book about meshing is a positive addition to the world. Right?
• A “cruising boat” was designed with the aid of CFD.

Events

• IGA 2018, the conference on isogeometric analysis, will be held 10-12 October 2018 in Austin, Texas with the theme “integrating design and analysis.”
• Also in Texas, Edward Tufte will be offering his 1-day class on Presenting Data and Information in Houston (29 January), Austin (31 January), and Dallas (02 February). [Tufte has been called the “da Vinci of data” and the “Galileo of graphics” and while I’ve also been known to engage in hyperbole, let me just say that the class is well worth your time.]
• The 2018 FLOW-3D European Users Conference will be held in Stuttgart on 14-16 May. The call for abstracts is open with a due date of 30 March.
• MeshTrends, the Symposium on Trends in Unstructured Mesh Generation, will be held (like always) in conjunction with the World Congress on Computational Mechanics in New York City on 22-27 July 2018. The abstract deadline has been extended to 15 January.

Vertigo? What vertigo?

Alert reader Chris pointed me to the work of Peter Kogler as featured on colossal.com. However, the article uses words like “vertigo” and “hallucinatory” but all I see is a beautiful structured grid, overset or not. However, whether these rooms/grids challenge the viewer’s “sense of sanity” is more aligned with common thoughts on grid generation.

Peter Kogler, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 2014. Image from colossal.com. See link above.

Bonus: Thank you to alert reader Conny who joined a group of us for a morning jog at AIAA SciTech after learning about the event from a post here on AFM. I look forward to running with more of you at future AIAA conferences although I must admit the prospect of running in downtown Atlanta in July (at AIAA Aviation) has me sweating already.