In this first edition of This Week in CFD for the new year we find several job openings including some at Pointwise, both permanent positions and internships. There are also long reads about designers’ use of simulation and the criticality of meshing to CFD. Plus you’ll see an article about a NASA simulation of the side-by-side rotorcraft shown here in this beautiful flowfield visualization. 

Software

• SimScale announced a new, GPU-based, Lattice-Boltzmann flow solver.
• Recently released EDEM v2019 for discrete element modeling includes a multi-GPU solver.
• RhinoCFD v2.0 was released.
• Friendship Systems released CAESES 4.4 including, among other things, healing of B-Rep NURBS.
• Beta CAE released v18.1.4 of their software suite.

Fluent results for the ONERA M-6 wing for four different meshes. Image from the GridPro blog. See link below.

Open Positions at Pointwise

• We have an open, entry-level position for a technical support engineer that’s perfect for someone who loves meshing and CFD.
• We are also seeking summer interns for three of our technical teams.
  • technical support intern
  • product development intern
  • applied research intern

Screen capture from a video showing the design, fabrication, and installation of the world’s largest 3-D printed structure by Branch Technology and Thornton Tomasetti. We’re happy that the Pointwise software is a small part of this work.

More Jobs

• Numeca has a job opening for a Lattice Boltzmann CFD engineer.
• Siemens PLM seeks product managers for their STAR-CCM+ CFD solver.

Applications

• From HPCwire comes an article about the use of neural networks to accelerate CFD solutions without sacrificing accuracy: Deep Learning for Fluid Flow Predictions in the Cloud.
• For my automobile loving friends I share this article/video about the design and use of CFD for the Rimac C_Two. [I found this statement about CFD to be amusing: “The air around the vehicle splits into more than 70 million parts, each of which factor into how the vehicle is affected and reacts. This is where computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations help to solve complex equations that are far too complicated for simpleton bloggers to comprehend.” As a simpleton blogger myself, I applaud this self-awareness.]
• FLOW-3D publishes some cool applications such as this trench type sump pump.
• Here’s CFD for kilns.
• For the 2021 season, Formula 1 teams are no longer limited on how much CFD simulation they can use.
• New [to me] is South African and USA based CFD consultancy Aerotherm.
• From PTC comes Why Design Engineers Need to Perform Their Own Simulations. While the article identifies Creo Simulation Live as a tool that can potentially make this happen (understandable), what’s also important (perhaps more so) is understanding what design engineers want and need from their simulation tools.

My image of the week is a NASA simulation of a side-by-side rotorcraft. Image from nasa.gov.

News and Events

• Iowa’s Fred Stern, a principle contributor to the CFDShip-Iowa CFD code, was recognized with the David W. Taylor Medal for Notable Achievement in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.
• ICYMI, Analytical Methods is now AMI Aero (VSAERO and more).
• ANSYS developed an open file format standard for thermal simulations.
• At the recent SC18 (aka Supercomputing) conference, a panel session looked back at a 2008 study on exascale and looked forward to exascale in 2028. Read more in Revisiting the 2008 Exascale Computing Study.
  • On a similar note, the AIAA CFD 2030 Vision Integration Committee will be taking a look at 5 years of progress toward the 2030 vision in a special session at AIAA Aviation this summer in Dallas.
• Speaking of the CFD 2030 IC, read Marching Toward the 2030 Vision of CFD in Aerospace America’s annual year in review issue.
• The University of Capetown and their CFD solver Elemental was recognized by Airbus with a Best Innovation in Flight Physics award.
• Applied CCM announced their schedule of OpenFOAM classes in Australia. (Full disclosure: Applied CCM is a partner of Pointwise’s.)
• The next Code_Saturne and Neptune_CFD User Meeting will be 07 May 2019.

A short blog post from Seth Godin reminded me of my favorite CFD report, the CFD Vision 2030 Study. He wrote “Twelve years from now, your future self is going to thank you for something you did today.” Read more from A Note from 2030. Pocket sized edition of The Study shown above with coin for scale.

Meshing and Visualization

• The GridPro blog asks [hopefully rhetorically] Do Meshes Still Play a Critical Role in CFD? [Spoiler: Yes.]
• Here’s best of the visualization web for September 2018 from Visualizing Data.
• On a similar note, here are the winners of 2018’s Information is Beautiful Awards.

Not Automated Meshing

Comments on a recently published article about “black box” meshing [that I haven’t finished reading] asked whether anyone still hand crafts meshes anymore. I think we can agree that artist Matt Shlian takes hand crafting to the ultimate level in his drawing Drift shown below.

Matt’s main area of expression is paper sculpture and implies that he has an engineering background upon which his artistic practice is built. “Researchers see paper engineering as a metaphor for scientific principles; I see their inquiry as a basis for artistic inspiration.”

Matt Shlian, Drift, 2009. Ballpoint pen on paper. Image from mattshlian.com. See links above.