Welcome to another adventure in curated CFD news, curated being a fancy word for “whatever I find interesting.” Lots of hypersonics this week, lots of built environment applications this week, and a couple of cool animations. And toward the end there’s an article about CAD files that I’d like to read your comments about (about which I’d like to read your comments). Shown here is a mesh you really want to get right – nuclear reactor rod bundles.

Blogs

• As you know, Pointwise was recently acquired by Cadence Design Systems. Cadence is a leader in the EDA field who has recently begun broadening their portfolio of computational software with CFD: first Numeca, now us. One of the new opportunities this created was a second blogging platform to share CFD information, the Cadence CFD Blog. I wrote my first post there yesterday. Our plan is to continue to use both platforms, with original content on each and amplification of that content on the other. It also provides an opportunity to introduce Cadence’s blog readers to this new CFD stuff. [And who wouldn’t love to the opportunity to double their writing workload.] If I can write ’em both, I hope you can follow ’em both.
• Speaking of blogs, ITI has added to their blog a series on model-based definition (MBD) and model-based enterprise (MBE). This complements other topics covered such as interoperability, their CADfix product, and more.

Sometimes

• What’s the saying? “Disk space is cheap.” Perhaps true, relative to other computing hardware. But if you think hard disks have plateaued in terms of capacity, think again. Energy assisted magnetic recording can give us hard drives with 60TB of storage. [Isn’t it still true that the most bang for your computing buck comes from RAM?]
• “High-order methods have the potential to overcome the current limitations of standard CFD solvers,” says the website for Argonne’s NEK solver.
• Be aware that NAFEMS has a series of student awards for the best of simulation engineering.
• Has anyone tried FreeCAD, the “open-source, 3D, parametric modeler”?

The Headings

• With the pandemic bringing in-person conferences to a virtual halt [see what I did there?], the AIAA’s many CFD workshops have been shuffled around and rescheduled. The latest information has been compiled and posted on the AIAA CFD 2030 Integration Committee’s website, cfd2030.com. Just look at the list for AIAA SciTech this coming January.
  • 4th High Lift Prediction Workshop
  • 3rd Geometry and Mesh Generation Workshop
  • 1st Large Eddy Workshop on Smooth Body Separation
  • High-Fidelity CFD Workshop (nee High-Order CFD Workshop)
  • 9th Hover Prediction Workshop
• You may infer, as I have, that all these workshop organizers feel confident that AIAA SciTech will be held in-person. I plan to attend.
• Also, I hope you noticed that the mother of all CFD workshops, the Drag Prediction Workshop, is planning a 7th version at AIAA Aviation 2022.

CFD for…

• urban air quality. [According to this study, the pedestrians in the Los Angeles of the Blade Runner movies would be living in a stew of toxic and viral particulates.]
• the Aeolos P30 Racer, a boat. [I don’t mind boats. It’s the deep water around them that I have a problem with.]
• built environments, featuring BricsCAD and SimScale.

From Cadence

• Watch the on-demand video Rapid Viscous CFD Mesh Generation for Propellers to see the best methods for approaching a meshing challenge.
• Read about Emirates Team New Zealand’s use of the FINE/Marine CFD software to design a winning boat.
• Take 18 minutes to learn about the Flashpoint suite of automation features for mesh generation in Pointwise.

Don’t Mean Much

• From CAD Files to Engineering Data Platforms. Let’s jump right to the conclusion from Beyond PLM: “The 2020s will be a decade in which engineering platforms will be moving from file-based approaches to granular engineering data platforms.” [Is file-less CFD a dream similar to the paperless office?]
• In an interview with Siemens Digital Industries Software’s CEO, Monica Schnitger elicits the insights that CFD continues to grow and propel their CAE offerings.

Making the Natural Unnatural

Artist Jennifer Frank works with a lot of discarded building materials to explore their innate materiality and elevate them beyond their mass-produced origins. As reported by American Scholar, her recent Rodified series involves work with wooden dowel rods. Some are assembled and hung indoors to create a play of form and shadow, solid and intangible. But her outdoor installations as shown here are what brought my browsing to a halt. She’s created a juxtaposition of the manufactured and the natural and brought this wood back to its forest source. As she says, placing them in nature adds the element of movement and returns them to a state of liveness as they sway in the breeze.

Reminder: The World Championship Air Race resumes in 2022.