This week we lead the CFD news with the release of the CFD Vision 2030’s roadmap update for 2015-2020, the first such deep dive into progress toward the Vision since the study’s original publication in 2014. I encourage you to download, read, and comment. There’s more good reading this week in the form of a how-to article on telling a story with CFD from our friends at Tecplot and a new book on high-order CFD from my Cadence colleague, Charles Hirsch. And there are two articles about things missing from the rear of cars: a wiper blade on a Hyundai and a rear wing on a Le Mans car. Shown here is simulation of a notional hypersonic glide vehicle the details of which you can read about here.

CFD Vision 2030 – The 2020 Update

You’ll have to indulge me for beginning with a topic near and dear to my heart: the NASA CFD Vision 2030. Earlier this week the AIAA CFD Vision 2030 Integration Committee released its first update to the Vision’s roadmap to 2030. This report (freely available at cfd2030.com/report) covers progress in all six of the roadmap’s technical domains (HPC, physical modeling, numerical algorithms, geometry and meshing, knowledge extraction, and MDAO). This report covers progress during 2020 and a 5-year perspective going back to 2015. It’s 71 pages and 309 references worth of CFD goodness. Would love to hear your feedback after you’ve had a chance to look it over. And we’ve already started on the 2021 update.

While on the topic of the AIAA CFD Vision 2030 IC, there are two IC events coming up at AIAA Aviation in August. We’re hosting a technical panel on physical modeling that you won’t want to miss. And if reading all 71 pages of the report, we’ll be presenting a technical paper on the roadmap update which is the Reader’s Digest version. [Do people even grok Reader’s Digest references anymore?]

Why do I even…

• Did you know ERCOFTAC offers a series of best practice guides for CFD?
• My colleague, Dr. Charles Hirsch, is co-author of a new book, TILDA: Towards Industrial LES/DNS in Aeronautics, that covers development and application of high-order methods for high-fidelity CFD.
• “OpenSBLI is an open-source code-generation system for compressible fluid dynamics (CFD) on heterogeneous computing architectures. Written in Python, OpenSBLI is an explicit high-order finite-difference solver on structured curvilinear meshes.”
• Is is a good idea for a Le Mans hypercar to lack a rear wing? [I’ll admit that this car looks pretty cool.]
• CFD for combined-cycle gas turbines.
• Spend about 30 minutes with this video on fluid dynamics informed machine learning.

…bother trying to…

• ESI combines its software environment with OpenFOAM to deliver Visual-Environment for OpenFOAM.
• Ricardo is using Spatial’s CGM (CATIA Geometry Modeler) in their Vectis software to improve the CAD to meshing workflow.
• 256 qubits doesn’t sound like a lot, but they represent a number of quantum states greater than the number of atoms in the universe. So you can imagine that this achievement brings us much closer to practical quantum computers. [Come for the physics, stay for the “atomic Mario” video.]
• More work on embedding ML into simulation.
• From an article on the “top 5” CFD startups around the world, I learned about Graphler, VirtusAero, and Tau Flow. [I already knew about the other two.]
• If you scroll down far enough you’ll see how Volkswagen used Autodesk’s AI [or was it generative design cuz they ain’t the same] to create some “alien chic” parts for a showcase car. [I apologize to the alert reader who shared this with me for forgetting their name.]

…group things by heading?

• CFD for gears. [Simulations of lubricant dispersion in a gear mechanism are fascinating.]
• CFD for conical-shaped solar panels.
• CFD for the Hyundai Ioniq 5. [Come for the discussion of the rear window wiper, stay for the video.]
• Beta CAE released v22.0.0 of their software suite.
• Take 11 minutes for this SimScale video on the basics of meshing.
• CFD for an off-road version of the Porsche 911.
• CFD for sanitary tanks.
• CFD (on AWS) for designing the 2022 F-1 car.
• CFD for the RML Short Wheelbase which [to me] is an odd name for a fancy car based on a Ferrari.
• Registration is open for September’s ENGYS UGM 2022 in Detroit.

The Grid as Activator of the 3rd Dimension

Consider Donald Judd’s statement that visual art consists primarily of material, color, and space and furthermore that material is tangible, color is only visible in an relative sense, and space is invisible and intangible.

Then consider that Judd is primarily known for his sculptures such as Untitled 1967 in the collection of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth where all three aspects interplay simply and profoundly in 3D.

How does one manifest those same aspects in 2D, in painting? Judd’s Untitled 1992 shown below is a wonderful example. The perfect grid of white lines both constrains the red rectangle in 2D and activates it in depth. Perhaps influenced by Josef Albers, the moiré effect at the intersections of the white lines enlivens the work by sweeping the viewer’s focus across the painting’s surface.

For more about grids in painting, see How The Grid Conquered Contemporary Art.