The CFD world is producing some thought-provoking articles during the pandemic including one from SimScale on cloud computing and one from Fastway on their CAE Maturity Model. Two videos go into detail on use of AWS for CFD and an introduction to blastFoam. Shown here is a SolidWorks simulation of an electronics enclosure.

News

• Today is the last day to share your thoughts on next summer’s 3rd AIAA Geometry and Mesh Generation Workshop which is to be held in conjunction with the 4th AIAA CFD High Lift Prediction Workshop. Please take a few minutes for this survey.
• Phoenix Integration announced a postponement of their 2020 International Users’ Conference to 22-24 September 2020.
• Hexagon reported a 7% decrease in revenue for Q1. Get all the details from Monica Schnitger’s full article. [Reminder: I will share a bit more financial news that usual because pandemic.]
• ANSYS reported a 37% revenue decrease from Q4 to Q1. “the current economic environment will continue to have a negative impact on our revenue”
• Here’s the best of the visualization web for February 2020.

Thank you to alert reader Heather for sharing this delightfully meshed face mask to remind us of discretization while being discrete with our oral exhaust. source

Pointwise and Friends

• Our friends at ENGYS shared Topology Optimization with Pointwise and HELYX-Adjoint, both as a presentation at our most recent User Group Meeting and as a case study.
• Along with our friends at ISimQ we recorded a webinar on Solution-Based Mesh Adaptation with Pointwise and ANSYS CFX.
• Our SAE WCX paper with our friends at Phoenix Integration, CAD-Based Design Optimization of a Race Car Front Wing, was chosen for inclusion in an SAE Journal. Before that journal article gets published, you can watch the recorded webinar which includes CFD by Altair’s AcuSolve.
• Did you hear? Our recently launched online training course, Pointwise Mesh Generation Foundations, remains free through May.

Grid refinement test case from Cobalt Solutions. Image from cobaltcfd.com.

CFD for…

• bikes, as in which is better: a lighter bike or a more aerodynamic bike?
• the Ferrari 488 GTE.
• thermal analysis of electronics packaging.

I will pluck the mesh picture from an article about applied CFD, in this case for the Ferrari 488 GTE. You can tell which CFD solver they used just from the mesh, can’t you? See link above. Image from ferrari.com. 

Software

• Beta CAE launched v19.1.7 of their software suite.
• If you’re interested in blowing things up, take time for the recording of the blastFoam3.0 workshop from earlier this month. The software is a variant of OpenFOAM for detonation simulations.
• SimScale dives into The Past, Present, and Future of Cloud Computing and comes up with some predictions. Like AWS will continue to lead cloud computing. [I was using cloud computing without even knowing it back in 1984-1987 because our software ran on government supercomputers in another state while we sat contentedly in front of our teletypes or Tek 4014s.]
• Speaking of the cloud and AWS, you can enjoy the recorded webinar CFD for Motorsport. Here are the slides.
• xNURBS v4 for Rhino and SolidWorks is now available.

What Else?

• LEAP Australia launched the LEAP Learning Hub for training on ANSYS products.
• Fastway Engineering introduces their CAE Maturity Matrix.
• There is a new LinkedIn group for LGBT CAE practitioners.
• Boom Supersonic wants to hire an aerodynamics CFD leader.
• EnginSoft USA and ASSESS announced their Stay at Home Internship Program for mechanical engineers.
• Registration is open for the CONVERGE User Conference in Detroit on 28 Sep – 02 Oct 2020.

Lines of Perspective

You may have heard it said that good art should “take you to another place.” Katy Ann Gilmore’s artwork for her booth at the Art Basel 2019 fair certainly does that. Through the use of nothing more than simple lines, she creates space beyond the confines of her booth. She has similar installations in Google’s, Facebook’s, and Vans’ corporate offices.

I’m fortunate to have one of her works hanging on the wall of my office. It’s similar to a work on her website that’s available for purchase called Catenary Path 2 but features more of an unstructured mesh motif that’s only hinted at on the front of her 2002 Nissan Maxima.

Katy Ann Gilmore, Volta Basel 2019. Image from artist’s website. See links above.