This week’s CFD news includes a must-watch video of an LES simulation, a very cool application of CFD to downhill skateboarding, and a good overview of where simulation now fits into all aspects of a design process. Of course, there’s also plenty of mesh goodness including this image from a big announcement from Onscale.

News

• Writing on the Simcenter blog, Chad Jackson shares his view of the expanding simulation needs of engineers and how a suite of tools rather than just one may best serve those needs. [He also touches on meshing requirements ranging from full automation to fine control.]
• Also from Siemens comes a video demonstration of their new Re-Mesh capability. [My eyesight is getting pretty bad because gray grid lines on a gray surface all but disappear.]
• Our friends at cloud platform Onscale just got a $10 million investment. In addition to buzzwords like “autonomous vehicles” the announcement includes a nice mesh image.

This is a screen capture of a MUST WATCH video included in an article about research at the Univ. of Pennsylvania about wall-modeled LES.

Software

• The NASA and USAF funded Engineering Sketch Pad got some visibility on the Various Consequences blog. [Full disclosure: Pointwise is involved in research that uses ESP’s geometry attribution capability to automate meshing.]
• On the Tecplot blog we read how they implemented their Parallel SZL Output capability directly into the SU2 CFD code. [And bonus points for the haiku.]
• How to visualize MSC Nastran results in MSC Apex.

Thanks to alert reader Steve for sharing this tessellation disguised as hotel decor. Because the mesh cells are all virtually identical, I can only assume the color variation is some sort of round-off error in the metric being displayed.

Applications

• CFTurbo 10.4 was launched with an improved interface to Pointwise and a full integration into ANSYS Workbench and more.
• CFD was used in the design of a marine propeller that reduces cavitation and radiated noise.
• CFD can be used to minimize failures due to overheating in embedded electronics.
• CFD for paracycling.

SimScale shares how CFD was used to help set a downhill skateboarding record of 91 mph. Image from simscale.com. [I learned so much in this article, from the fact that downhill skateboarding was even a thing to the term “gravity sports.”]

Grid Weaving

Not to be confused with whisker weaving which is the name of a meshing technique, Analia Saban‘s woven works use traditional looms and materials, often along with special materials like copper wire, to create a tension between the classical and the modern.

Analia Saban, Loom. Currently on display at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Photo credit: me.

Bonus: Pointwise is hiring. We have an open position for an engineer on our Technical Support team. If you like generating meshes for a huge variety of applications, check it out.