We begin 2021 Q4 with a lot of reading. No internet sound bites this week: V&V, quantum computing, physics and math, machine learning, and lots more. For students, do not leave this blog post until you’ve looked into the scholarships (for those getting started) and the jobs (for those now finishing) and the free software (for those in the middle). Shown here is a tiny version of this week’s MUST SEE image and an award-winning image at that. Created in Tecplot, it shows what goes on inside a thermocapillary liquid bridge.

Meshing

• “Hex and Tet are what you call frenemies, they are friends but are secretly jealous of each other and green with envy.” And so begins a comparison of hex and tet finite elements. Two nits to pick.
  • A stated pro of hex elements is that “The mesh looks athletically [sic] pleasing to the eye.” This reminds me of a favorite aphorism: “Your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant.” I love meshes more than the average guy but we have to stop glamourizing their appearance. Just like we have to stop body-shaming geometry models.
  • The choice needn’t be either or. But sometimes our friends on the solver side force the mesh to conform to their choices.
  • I also am curious as to why the author chose to anthropomorphize hex and tet and females.
  • They surely meant “aesthetically.”

CFD for…

• medical inhalers.
• the Haas F team.
• solar panels.
• bicycles.

Reading

• I can get kinda preachy about verification and validation. NAFEMS offers this article on an Introduction to V&V with comments from an expert panel. Users of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software aren’t immune: “it’s appropriate for the organization that buys the license to do their own code verification testing.” The paper Is the Problem with the Mesh, the Turbulence Model, or the Solver? provides the interesting insight that not only is the blame evenly distributed the user is a contributor to the problem too.
• Would you pay US$270,000 for this wind tunnel? The Aero-Optim targets cycling but there could be other uses. Maybe you could combine it with this pressure rake with built-in, pressure-sensitive LED lighting/
• Research Rabbit claims to be like Spotify but for technical papers. [Given that I think Spotify is destroying the music industry by paying artists micro cents per play, I’m not certain that’s a good analogy.] Good thing their logo is a mesh.
• The PLM Atlas Directory is “the most comprehensive directory, classification taxonomy, relationships map, and history of the global ecosystem of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) related technologies, solution markets, software products, service providers, consultants, user industries, professional organizations, events, and resources.”
• This Twitter thread shares must-read physics and math books that are freely available for download as PDFs. [I have read precisely one: Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.]
• This one I’ll have to read: Machine Learning Based Optimal Mesh Generation in CFD.

More Reading

• Do I really want to add Quantum Computation of Fluid Dynamics to my reading list? Maybe one of you can read it and provide a Reader’s Digest version in the comments. [What percentage of our readership knows what Reader’s Digest is and what the implications are?]
• Same question [the first one, not the rhetorical second one] about Machine Learning for Fluid Mechanics from the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics.
• This unsolicited advice targets astronomers but is probably applicable to CFD people too.
• CFD SEMI is building “a new generation hardware accelerator that allows us to democratize LES computations” based on DG methods, ASICs with high-bandwidth RAM, and linear scaling of thousands of these ASICs.
• Rescale offers the ebook [e-book? E-Book? Ebook?] HPC for R&D. (registration required)

Software

• Freely available 3D modeling software:
  • OpenSCAD
  • FreeCAD
  • Blender
• Beta CAE released SPDRM v1.5.2.

Events

• CadenceLIVE Europe, a digital event, will be held on 19 October. Registration is open. And there’s plenty of CFD and thermal simulation on the agenda.
• It looks like a lot of the presentations (written and video) from AutoCFD2 (the 2nd Automotive CFD Prediction Workshop) are now online. Be certain to see the one from Cadence’s Olivier Thiry.
• Autodesk University 2021 (for various locales) begins next week online.
• The deadline for the call for papers for the SIAM International Meshing Roundtable has been extended until 15 October.
• There’s still time (but not a lot) to register for Turbulence Modeling for Aerodynamic Flows taught by ANSYS’ Florian Menter.
• Students have until 19 October to register for a free, 8-week Basics of CFD course and you’ll get a free license of Cadence Omnis as part of the detal.

Jobs and Scholarships

• Do you know a high school senior planning to major in engineering? The AIAA plans to award up to four $10,000 scholarships. Check out the details of the Roger W. Kahn Scholarship.
• Speaking of AIAA, congratulations to the Class of 2022 Associate Fellows. Plenty of CFD and mesh generation on this list.
• Cadence’s Diversity in Technology Program offers several scholarships for…
  • Latinx students – due 11 Oct
  • Black students – due 11 Oct
  • Women students – due 11 Oct
• BMW has an opening for a PhD student in generative design for facet-based surfaces.
• Cadence seeks an Account Technical Executive for CFD in the Fort Worth Office. It’s nice here. You should submit your resume if you’ve got the technical chops but also like helping other people solve their CFD problems.
• Siemens Digital Industries has an opening for an application support engineer.

Full Circle

Let’s close how we started. Here’s the full-size version of the image that received the Best Picture in Physical Science award. Frank Muldoon, and his colleague, Hendrick Kuhlman, at the Vienna University of Technology, produced this visualization of their research results using Tecplot. Read the article at Tecplot for the details on what this image illustrates. Just beautiful.