This Week in CFD

Another week, more CFD news. Some really cool applications this week including the aircraft for a new air racing series and this screen capture of Synthetik’s simulation of air blast loads on a Gummy Bear. You also have the opportunity to share your thoughts in a survey on design technology. A couple of articles on colormaps are included so that our CFD images present the “forest of numbers” in their best light. All this and much more.

CFD for…

Airshaper CFD solution for Manta ANN2 aircraft, the baseline aircraft for the new Formula Air Grand Prix. [As much as I came to love the Red Bull Air Race before its retirement a couple of years ago, I hope this is a worthy alternative.] Image from airshaper.com. See link above.

Software

  • What’s new in SOLIDWORKS 2021? Better meshing for one thing.
  • Altair’s software, including the CFD code AcuSolve, will be available as a SaaS on Oracle’s cloud platform as part of the two company’s expanded partnership.
  • Speaking of Oracle, here’s a description of their cloud strategy.
  • Pointly aims to apply AI to the classification of point clouds.
    • Originally seen on WorldCAD Access from which I learned that some folks say AI stands for “actually ignorant.”
  • Autodesk was going to remove STEP export from Fusino 360. Now they’re not.
Cool car, cool CFD, horrible color. This STAR-CCM+ simulation of a Toyota vehicle for Le Mans is presented in the form of a sickly green motif which, after 40 years of doing this, I’m becoming quite tired of. [I’m picking on the Siemens folks because they can take it because I do it with love. Or they don’t give s**t what I think. One or the other. They’re probably wondering why I’m not picking on that Airshaper image.] Image from siemens.com. See link above.

Miscellaneous

Dizzying, yes. Interesting too. [The only thing I remember from helicopter aerodynamics is that you can judge the disk loading by its sound, allowing you to guess whether the helicopter is empty or loaded.] source

Events

From Pointwise

  • Pointwise released version 18.4 of our meshing software with the first of a planned serious of automation features collectively called Flashpoint. In V18.4, surface meshing has been automated. Given a geometry model and a handful of user-specified goals, the surface mesh is generated automatically including viscous resolution and anisotropy. We’ll have a lot more to say about Flashpoint in the coming weeks.
The surface mesh (black lines) on the geometry model (gray) was generated automatically using Pointwise Version 18.4. See link above.

Get Lost in a Forest of Numbers

Back in the day it was “You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.” Today, those of us engaged in numerical simulation may feel like “You are lost in a forest of numbers.”

Thanks to alert reader Carolyn, I can share with you today the installation Forest of Numbers by Emmanuelle Moureaux. It’s an example of how a simple concept executed with precision can have a dazzling effect, especially when experienced at the scale of this work.

Emmanuelle Moureaux, Forest of Numbers. Image from the artist’s website. See link above.
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