There’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.  

• DCS Computing announced their CFDEM Conference 2019, to be held 14-15 March 2019 in Linz, Austria. The due date for abstracts is 01 Sep 2018.
• Altair’s news:
  • Altair acquired FluiDyna and their GPU-accelerated Lattice-Boltzmann and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics CFD codes.
  • Altair will be the exclusive distributor of GE’s Flow Simulator software for engine system modeling.
• In reporting on Siemens’ recently reported financial results, Monica Schnitger identifies an overt emphasis by the company on their software, PLM and digital factory.

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.]

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.

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

• Here’s Visualizing Data’s best of the visualization web for February 2018.
• The first International Conference of Thermal Fluid Dynamics and Control will be held on 2-6 Aug 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Here’s a cool video of a gas cyclone simulation with particles performed using Caelus.
• CFD for bike aerodynamics is explained in this podcast.
• Creo 5.0 includes a new CFD capability.
• Car wheels now have active aerodynamics via an Audi patent.
• From Pointwise
  • Registration for the Pointwise User Group Meeting 2018 (14-15 November in Fort Worth) is now open.
  • The Call for Papers for the Pointwise UGM has a due date of  13 July.

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