This week’s CFD news includes several long-ish but worthy reads on intelligence, exascale, and reading news itself. Plus the usual software and application updates.

(This image courtesy of an article on CFD for F1.)

Computing & Geometry

• Exascale computing may be the key for growth of CFD in the energy sector, especially wind power where projected output in the year 2030 is slightly more than half the goal.
• I read every issue of Digital Engineering magazine so the results of their reader poll were very much of interest.
  • CFD is 10th on the list of things they want to read more about. #2 surprised me.
  • 84% of survey respondents are 45 years of age or older and 98% were male.
• Speaking of DE, here’s their article on defeaturing geometry models.
• I’ve only recently become aware of a minisymposium at this summer’s World Congress on Computational Mechanics on the topic of Geometry-centric High-order Unstructured Methods. Sounds like one worth attending.

Came for the picture but stayed for the article. DEVELOP3D ponders the issue of how we can best validate topology optimized and 3-D printed designs (like the one shown above). [I simply delight in the symmetry: we mesh our designs to simulate them, we manufacture designs by 3-D printing a mesh. For mesh thou art, and unto mesh thou shalt return.] Image from develop3d.com.  [We also read therein how much fuel savings can be had by descaling the toilet plumbing on 747s and 777s.]

Smarts, Intelligences, and Engineers

• This week’s must-read article comes from the Lifecycle Insights blog: Multiple Intelligences and the Engineer. Maybe I’m just tuned to this topic having attended a lecture on neuro linguistic programming (NLP) earlier in the week. But Chad Jackson opens for examination a fascinating, multi-faceted concept (where multi=9) of intelligence proposed in the early 1980s and assesses how relevant each facet maybe to the engineer. Plenty to think about and plenty more to debate.
  • If I had to choose, I think I’m strongest in linguistic intelligence and weakest in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. This jives with what I learned from the NLP lecture in which there are only 3 facets (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) and in which I’m strongest in the first two.

Applications & Software

Within the World of F1, CFD Is in Pole Position. Image from verneglobal.com.

• Visualizing Data presents their 10 most significant viz developments in the last half of 2017. #3 – bee swarm charts.
• “The updated UFO CFD solver is available as freeware again” here.
• Here’s a tutorial (slides) for meshing to a specific y+ in ANSYS.
• Envenio launched Project Discovery, “a unique and affordable opportunity to access high performance, cloud-hosted CFD software, and benefit from the expertise of an experienced engineering team who will execute the project on their behalf.”
• It’s 45 minutes, but this SpaceX video about rocket engine simulation is worth a watch.

NUMECA chose a CFD simulation of mesh screens in wind tunnels as winner of their white paper contest. Congrats to Putra Adnan Fadilah for this award. Image from blog.numeca.be.

Chaotic Grid

Artist Mark Francis combines the grid, a traditional component of abstract modern painting, with a visionary eye toward the scientific and what the human eye cannot see. There’s an orderly or partially constrained chaos at work here that humanizes what might otherwise be cold and rigid.

Mark Francis, Tracery, 2014. Image from markfrancisstudio.com. See link above.