If you like thought-provoking articles you’ll like one about virtual reality and CFD and another about simulation driven design and its future potential. Are we at the tipping point for both of these technologies? Plus all the other news about software releases, applications of CFD, and more. This image is an ElectroFlo electronics cooling simulation (see the full article below).

Software

• Do you need STAR-CCM+ Virtual Reality (coming in v13.02)? Read and see why now may be the time for CFD with VR. [They had me at mesh inspection.]
• NASA has made available (in the U.S.) RVCQ3D a 2D [?] CFD code for turbomachinery.
• CAESES 4.3 was released with improvements to geometry handling, optimization, and more.
  • CAESES 4.3.1, a maintenance release, is now available for production use.
• AeroDynamic Solutions released ADS CFD 7.0 including new turbulence models, improved multi-threading and parallel performance, and more.

Screen shot from a video demonstration of STAR-CCM+ VR coming in v13.02. Image from the SimCenter Blog. See link above.

Events

• Save the Date: The Pointwise User Group Meeting 2018 will be held on 14-15 November in Fort Worth.
• The 4th Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference will be held in Las Vegas on 14-17 April 2019. Abstracts are due by 01 Aug 2018. (The 3rd edition of this event is happening next week in Fort Lauderdale.)
• SC18 will be held 11-16 November in Dallas.
  • The Call for Papers for SC18 is now open with a 19 March due date for abstracts.
• The 26th Annual Conference of the CFD Society of Canada will be held 10-12 June 2018 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The deadline for abstracts has already passed.
• The 5th International Conference on Turbulence and Interactions will be held in Martinique on 25-29 June 2018.

Applications

Images of lubrication flow done using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics technique by Altair and FluiDyna for Drive System Design. Image from greencarcongress.com. 

• Use of CFD for design of exhaust flue gas systems.
• CFD was used to show that full-length inferior turbinate reduction is the best treatment for nasal obstruction. [Check off bucket list: use “nasal” in a blog post. I wish the article had included flow viz.]

Reading & Computing

• NASA has published another forward-looking report: Vision 2040: A Roadmap for Integrated Modeling of Materials and Systems.
• The ERCOFTAC Knowledge Base claims [because I haven’t checked it out personally] to be the “world’s foremost repository of structured knowledge and advice designed to underpin quality and trust in the industrial application of CFD.” You should check it out and let me know.
• It seems a bit counter-intuitive to have to justify the value of high performance computing, but here it is anyway: Why HPC Matters. [Yes, I get the fact that there’s a value component to be accounted for, ROI or whatever you want to call it. Computing for computing’s sake is a waste.]
• The University of Southampton gets HPC with their new 1,300 teraflop system.
• This is a worthy read from LifeCycle Insights, the first in a series: Simulation Driven Design, Past Failures, Future Promise.

Business & Jobs

• ANSYS continues to make money like it’s nobody’s business. 2017 Q4 revenue was up double digits resulting in them exceeding the $1 billion mark.
• Altair acquired electronics cooling application ElectroFlo.
• ThermoAnalytics has an open position for a Thermal/CFD engineer.

Faceted Safari

While on safari vacation recently, I encountered these faceted apes. They are part of the decor of Tiffins, a restaurant in Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom Park. Tiffins is one of my favorite places to eat at the entire WDW resort both for the food and the decor. All the dining rooms are jammed packed full of original field notes, sketches, and artifacts from the Imagineers’ worldwide studies for the design of Animal Kingdom.