This week’s post demonstrates the broad applicability of CFD with references to pumps, drones, scrubbers, towers, birds (as seen in this image), and more plus a must-see video from NASA. And it must be that time of year to announce CFD events because the calendar is expanding.

Meshing

• Simscale’s 5 tips on creating a high quality mesh can’t be argued against. [IMO. If you can, use the comments below.]
  • start with a watertight geometry model
  • choose a good cell size
  • cluster where needed
  • refine boundary layers
  • do a mesh convergence study
• Pointwise V18.1 is now available for production use.
• The Pointwise User Group Meeting 2018 will be held 14-15 November in Fort Worth.

From Pointwise V18.1: A cut plane through an overset mesh system generated for a container ship propeller configuration. Automated near-body mesh is generated using the new Build Blocks feature while off-body meshing utilizes new voxel hex-dominant meshing technology. See link above.

Events & News

• I usually don’t post information about webinars [except our own – I know, double standard] but this one caught my eye: CFD for aircraft certification featuring TLG Aerospace and Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
• The Numeca International User Meeting 2018 will be held on 16-17 October in Berlin.
• As a former user of Shapeways for 3-D printing, their acquisition by Amazon Web Services caught my attention.
• On a related note, the RAPID + TCT event will be here in Fort Worth on 23-26 April.
• The International Conference on Spectral and High Order Methods will be held on 9-13 July 2018 in London.
• The COMSOL Conference 2018 will be held in Boston on 3-5 October.
• CAESES (aka Friendship Systems) is hiring a C++ programmer in Potsdam.
• The Joint Franco/Belgium OpenFOAM Users Conference will be held 23-24 May in Valenciennes, France.
• The OpenVSP Workshop 2018 will be held 12-14 September in Pismo Beach, California.

Applications

• Application of the week: NASA’s CFD simulation of the Orion’s spacecraft’s launch abort vehicle. Must watch video.

NASA’s CFD simulation of the Orion Launch Abort Vehicle showing pressure (red=high, blue=low). Image from nasa.gov. See link above.

• CFD for…
  • dredge pumps
  • birds (specifically peregrine falcons, see image below)
  • [vroom, vroom] race cars (specifically the Renault Megane R.S. RX)
  • drones (specifically a hybrid tilt-rotor VTOL UAV)
  • condensate scrubbers
  • building information modeling (BIM) (specifically the Eiffel Tower)
  • [not CFD but GPUs] amusement park attractions (specifically the upcoming Millennium Falcon ride at Disney)
  • world rally cars (specifically M-Sport’s Ford Fiesta)
  • racing motorcycles
  • air radiators for trains
• From Visualizing Data, here is the best of the visualization web for January 2018.
• The CADfix API can be used to for many purposes, one of which is elevating linear meshes to higher polynomial order. [For the record, this resonates with me because we are pursuing the same path: high order meshing using our Geode geometry kernel API as an integral component.]

CFD simulation of a peregrine falcon in flight. Image from http://www.city.ac.uk. See link above.

This Week in Facets

Had serendipitous encounters with facets twice this week. First there was Kamrooz Aram’s painting shown below, Composition with Fragments. Despite my poor photography, I hope you can appreciate Aram’s juxtaposition of east and west, classic and modern. In addition, there appears to my eye a rectangular grid underlying the entire work. I like this painting more each time I look at it and hope The Modern acquires it for their permanent collection.

And what do you think of the red circle? Comments below, please.

Kamrooz Aram, Composition with Fragments, 2017.

Thanks to alert reader J.P. for making me aware of one of the costumes used in the recent live TV broadcast of Jesus Christ Superstar. Caiaphas is rocking those tri facets.

Caiaphus from Jesus Christ Superstar. Image credit: NBC/Paul Lee/NBC. Image from vulture.com. See link above.