This Week in CFD

Welcome to the “ides of March” roundup of CFD happenings. If you’re not currently enjoying spring break, check your knives at the door and dive into advice for engineering students from Jousef Murad that I couldn’t resist commenting on. Speaking of students, Cadence CFD wants you to be our summer software engineering interns. For the rest of you we’ve got CFD 2030, a ton of GPUs, a couple of wheels, event news, and a delicious application of the week. You are probably wondering what’s significant about this thermal simulation of a plate with a hole. Gonna have to click through for the deets.

The First Heading

News from Cadence HQ

APPLICATION OF THE WEEK: Modeling a pasta extruder in COMSOL. Delicious pasta. Image form comsol.com.

Advice for Students

Jousef Murad wrote about the ten mistakes every engineering student should avoid based on his own experience as a student. Here are a few comments based on my own experience as a student.

  1. Exam Night Fights (aka Don’t Pull All-Nighters) – I never stayed up all night studying during my undergrad.
  2. Running After Marks (aka Grades Aren’t Everything) – While grades aren’t everything, they are something. A high GPA (i.e. 3.5 or higher) on a student’s resume means either of two things to me: the person is naturally smart or the person works very hard to achieve smartness. And like Jousef writes, “do not aim to be the top performer in the class.” Just do the best you can.
  3. Bad Communication Skills (aka Learn How to Write and Speak) – It’s true. Your ideas aren’t worth diddly if you can’t communicate them to someone else.
  4. Not Doing Internships (aka Get Practical Experience) – While it’s not strictly necessary for your future success, an internship is a great way for you to learn about working life in your chosen field. Plus, it provides some validation to future employers that someone else had found you worthy.
  5. Not Picking a Proper Mentor (aka Thesis Supervisor) – While this may seem to apply only to graduate students, I was fortunate to work with a professor my senior year on an independent study project. The professor and I have remained friends in the decades since.
  6. Not Socializing (aka Have Some Fun) – I met my lovely wife of 36 years during my undergrad years. No more needs to be said.
  7. Join Random Courses (aka Choose Wisely) – The program of study for an undergrad engineering education is pretty well defined including a few slots for social science electives and the like. These days a good advisor will help you decide whether a minor can be obtained and this gives you the opportunity to focus those electives on something of interest to you. Back in the day I was on my way to a minor in philosophy but by the time I was a senior the thought of taking the Philosophy of Mathematics was more than I could handle (see independent study above). But with some planning you can explore another subject of interest to you.
  8. Not Coding (aka Programming As An Essential Skill) – There has been a discussion in industry and academia for years about how programming could be made an essential component of an undergraduate education. So much of modern engineering requires use of software so understanding how write your own software would provide useful insight. Plus there’s the practical aspect of being able to program handy tools throughout your time in school.
  9. Not Failing (aka Failing is Growing) – I often think that failure is over-rated in the business world. You see plenty of experts trying to take away the sting of failure by making it seem like “no pain no gain.” I’ve even heard business pundits say that you’re not a good business leader unless you’ve failed at least once. (Uh, no.) However, the low point of my undergraduate days was a machine design class on which I scored a 2 out of 100 for writing my name on the paper. That spurred an intense review and rework of everything in the course up to that test which helped me get over that failure and get an A in the class.
  10. Attending Every Lecture (aka There Are Better Things to To With Your Time) – I was the guy who attended every lecture and recitation and took notes. Different strokes for different folks.

GPU, Cloud, Business, Etc.

Was Released

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CFD for…

CFD for bike wheels. Image from bikerumor.com. See link above.

Sometimes the CFD is the Art

The art of science, the science of art, blah blah. Every profession claims to have a little bit of artistry in it. And sometimes visual appeal is a suitable substitute for fine art. We know it when we see something we like. And I like this. It’s a simulation of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability on a moving Voronoi mesh. Watch the video.

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability computed on a moving Voronoi mesh. See link to video above.

P.S. Apologies for this rather tepid edition. Migraines.

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2 Responses to This Week in CFD

  1. Julien de Charentenay says:

    Hi John. KS3 stands for Key Stage 3. 11 to 14 years old. The Wikipedia page is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Stage_3

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