This Week in CFD

STAR-CCM-F1-smallThere’s an article you must read this week from the SimCenter blog about Formula 1 aerodynamics and STAR-CCM+. Very cool, very enjoyable, and a great body of work. The rest of the news, due to time constraints, is unformatted and uncategorized.  

STAR-CCM-F1

MUST READ story of the week: A Brief History of Formula 1 Aerodynamics from the Siemens PLM SimCenter blog (where this image is from). 

  • In this article about using CFD to study data center cooling we [OK, maybe just I] learned several things.
    • By 2020, worldwide data center power consumption will reach 60 GW. So cooling them efficiently will be important.
    • “Exergy” is a term from thermodynamics meaning the amount of work available in a given system. [Apologies to my mechanical engineering professors for forgetting that.]
exergy-in-data-center

Temperature profiles in a data center. Image (cropped) from sciencetrends.com. See link above.

  • Cooling schools is a hot topic in Hawai’i. This article mentions CFD simulation of a passive cooling system and includes a photo of a nice looking sun shade.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics Software Infrastructure (CFDSI) is the name of an NSF-funded initiative centered at the University of Colorado at Boulder for “conceptualizing” a sustainable software development environment.
    • They are holding a kickoff workshop at the university on 16-17 May. If anyone attends or sees results of this workshop, please share with me.
    • When I read their website, what I see is an effort for university researchers to stop reinventing the wheel by having to write an entire CFD software system just so they can do research one particular method or algorithm or component. Others may interpret it differently like a CREATE program for academia. Any other interpretations?
  • On what might be a similar note, the Precise Code Interaction Coupling Environment preCICE v1.1.1 is available for use (open source).
  • ANSYS’ Q1 included a $50 million deal leading to $285 million in revenue for the quarter and a 9% increase in software revenue.
    • In which we also read “Hiring is tough, says ANSYS.”
  • Advanced Thermal Solutions uses the 6SigmaET CFD solver for electronics thermal simulation.
Supergrip_results-CFD

Thermal simulation of heat sinks performed by ATS. Image from qats.com. See link above.

 

coachella-edoardo-9

Meshes at Coachella? Wireframe architecture appeared at the music festival courtesy of Edoardo Tresoldi. Image from Colossal. 

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