While most of the world’s CFD news seems to be about event cancellations or postponements, releases of new software and articles abound. For example, have you ever questioned the validity of the no-slip condition? Here’s some automotive CFD from the announcement of ELEMENTS 3.2.1.

Fluids & Events

• It appears the no-slip condition isn’t absolute. Under certain circumstances, bubble formation can result flow that slides along the walls.
• How about a video of a PW F100 exhaust plume in which you can see the shock diamonds and Mach disks?
• The 4th German OpenFOAM User Meeting (22 April) is now a virtual meeting.
  • Note: I’m doing my best to keep the Events page updated with cancellations, postponements, and conversions to online. Let me know if I’m missing anything.

Programming & Computing

After over a year of development, Pointwise software training is now available online and is offered at no cost during the month of April.

• If Python isn’t the programming language of the future, what is? Rust?
• The Exascale Computing Project released the status of 30 software projects (porting codes to GPU) as of the end of 2019.
• The market for HPC products and services is now expected to be at best flat during 2020 and possibly 12% down due to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. [As you know, I am not a fan of most market forecasts but this is one is serious and relevant.]

Software

Our friends at Leap Australia wrote about the use of CFD for ventilating underground railway tunnels. Be sure to visit the site to see the animations.

• Rheolef is a C++ library for finite elements.
• ANSYS announced Simulation World, “the largest engineering simulation virtual event in the world,” to be held 10-11 June. They are seeking speakers for this free event.
• More on democratization of CFD.
• ENGYS announced the release of ELEMENTS 3.2.1, a suite of open-source CFD capabilities for automotive design.
• preCICE v2.0.2 was released.

I haven’t heard from our friends at Cobalt Solutions for a while so it was nice to see them post some experiments with mesh adaptation.

CFD for…

• patrol vessels.
• urban environments.
• chemical mixing.

Going Inside the Mesh

Famed architect Sou Fujimoto is known for structures that seamlessly integrate the built environment with nature and natural forms. His Naoshima Pavilion (2014-2015) uses stainless steel to create a faceted structure that looks from the exterior like a boulder but from the interior attenuates one’s perspective of the outside world. Laurian Ghinitoiu’s photographs of the pavilion (on Arch Daily) show both sides of this enchanting structure.

Sou Fujimoto, Naoshima Pavilion. Photo copyright by Laurian Ghinitoiu. Image from archdaily.com. See link above.

Bonus: Most of us know origami, the art of folding paper into complex shapes. I recently learned about kirigami, cut paper that transforms into virtually any 3D shape when pulled in the right direction. Now researchers have programmed where the cuts are to be made to achieve the desired results. The potential for these tessellations to result in shape-morphing mechanical metamaterials is intriguing.