These past three weeks of CFD news threaten to turn this regular post into This Month in CFD if the burst of business travel doesn’t abate. But the more content the merrier. For those of you up for some fluids video-learning, there’s a 25-part series from the 60s that should keep you entertained for a while. I look forward to your feedback on the paper comparing tet and hex meshes, “hero” calculations pros/cons, and a wonderful (to me) article about prism layer meshing. Of course, there’s a lot more to comment on and share too. Oh, and please weigh in on the “top” and “best” CFD software lists. FieldView can always be counted on for some interesting CFD graphics such as this side-by-side rotor configuration for a UAM vehicle showing isosurfaces of Q-criterion colored by vorticity magnitude.
You’ll have the opportunity to see a great lineup of CFD presentations at CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley coming up on 08 June at the Santa Clara Convention Center. You’ll learn about the Fidelity Flow H-O solver, hypersonic reentry flows, turbulence modeling and lift coefficient predication for the NASA High-Lift Common Research Model, mesh adaptation, the CFD Vision 2030, and wall-resolved LES computations on the DoE’s Summit supercomputer. In addition, several members of the Cadence CFD team will be available to answer all your questions about Fidelity CFD Software. [Because I’ll be flying home to DFW on Fri 10 Jun, I’ll tell you right now there won’t be a This Week in CFD on that day.]
My colleague Veena wrote a nice article for Semiconductor Engineering about the era of fluid simulations in Hollywood. She didn’t mention Twister which included the infamous (and regrettably fictional) Silicon Graphics laptop. Being an SGI fanboi back in the 80s and 90s, a laptop was an incredible tease. Also, in Jurassic Park the file system display that the girl has to navigate also came out of SGI.
Monica Schnitger reports that after a strong Q1, Cadence is still very happy with its CAE offerings.

Batteries in an electric vehicle will need a lot of CFD to model the liquid cooling required to keep them operating in the range 15C/60F – 45C/113F.
This is worth curling up on the couch with cool drink: A Large-Scale Comparison of Tet and Hex Elements for Solving Elliptic PDEs with the Finite Element Method.
Wow – this is pretty detailed. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ price-performance on AWS.
I’m not bright enough to figure out what’s going on in Emergence-Based Approach to CFD. “This paper investigates a radically different approach, in which the system is modelled from the bottom up, thus avoiding the need for Navier-Stokes equations whilst still relying on the same fundamental principles.” [A personal goal of mine is to use “whilst” in a technical paper.]

Autosport.com missed a huge opportunity by burying the lede in the article “How to become a Senior Aerodynamicist in F1.” A better title would be “Rebecca Wilson Shares How She Became a Senior Aerodynamicist for McLaren F-1 – And How You Can Too.” Serves the same purpose but profiles an actual person and a female at that for diversity cred. Am I being too harsh?
Speaking of women in engineering, join us at ASME Turbo Expo in Rotterdam next month for the Women in Engineering Networking Program of which Cadence is a proud sponsor. And while you’re there, join us for our Lunch & Learn where you’ll hear about the latest developments in CFD from Cadence and visit us at Booth 308 in the exhibition hall.

Cadence’s Prof. Charles Hirsch will deliver a keynote address at July’s NASA Turbulence Modeling Symposium. In addition to the titular topics, this year’s event will be a tribute to Philippe Spalart and will feature machine learning as a subtopic.
DEVELOP3D asks whether online events are shortchanging users? “Online, nobody can hear you scream – or whoop.” This is only the most recent perspective on online events that I’ve seen. Other studies have shown that online events allow broader participation, especially by those who might be too junior to travel to an in-person event.
The Unfortunate Myth of the Hero Calculation makes clear what the author thinks of these massive simulations on massive supercomputers. They are stunts, nothing more. One quote stands out to me: “One calculation is never the answer; it is the ensemble of many calculations that make for good computational science.” I’m imagining, however, that a hero calculation could be done in a way that achieves legitimate goals. In other words, some hero calcs could be crap, others not. What do you think?

Carbon nanotubes for electronics. [In which we see a rare use of the word “endurant” which I have no desire to use in a technical paper.]
NASA Langley’s new Measurement Systems Lab will create datasets for CFD validation.
Beta CAE released v22.1.2 of their software suite.
CFD Direct has published Notes on CFD: General Principles by Greenshields and Weller both online (free) and in paperback.
CFD for a Trans-AM TA2 Mustang.
I think we all know that “top” and “best” lists are subject to interpretation. For example, “top” by what measure? What does “best” mean? With that preamble, here are 10 Best CFD Analysis Software for Advanced Product Development and Top CFD Software. Can’t wait to read your comments on this.

CAD Exchanger v3.11.0 has a new user interface among other features.
The paper Study on Dynamic Characteristics of Mars Entry Module in Transonic and Supersonic Speeds has some nice structured grid pics.
An interesting survey of how the engineering industry is reacting to the war in Ukraine.
Tecplot’s PyTecplot Python-based API is like LEGOs meaning that it provides the fundamental building blocks so that you can extract precisely the engineering knowledge you need from your simulation results. Pointwise’s Glyph scripting language is like that too. [And less painful to step on.]
CFD for HVAC simulations of indoor built environments.


Straight Lines, Not-Broken Lines and Broken Lines in all Their Possible Combinations, 1973. source