Some very cool applications of CFD (like the one shown here) dominate this week’s CFD news including asteroid impacts, fish, and a mesh of a mesh. For those of you with access, NAFEM’s article 100 Years of CFD is worth your time. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you to register for CadenceCONNECT CFD coming up on 19 April in Santa Clara. Shown here is a screen capture from one video on a wonderful webpage about triple-point shock interaction.

Those of you who are NAFEMS members have probably already seen the special issue from Oct 2022 of BENCHMARK magazine on 100 Years of CFD. And those of you with a strong stomach probably noticed that they allowed me the opportunity to share a few thoughts an observations. That black mark aside, the issue is worth downloading and reading cover to cover. [Does anyone know whether NAFEMS eventually makes back issues of the magazine open to the public?]

Watch Prof. Volkmar Welker describe triangle subdivision. [Thanks to alert reader Mike for the tip.]

The folks at ENGYS want your input on their annual CFD technology trends survey.

The AIAA announced the 2023 Class of Fellows and Honorary Fellows.

CFD for ensuring your gas turbines don’t explode.

A survey of free CAD systems (seven are listed). [Anyone else wonder why it’s a CAD “system” and not CAD “software” like everything else? Is CAD on par with an operating system? What distinction is being made here? Or is it just a tradition?]

Our friends at Ansys continue to make lots of money: Q4 revenue just shy of $700 million and an operating profit margin around 37%.

Why fish swim intermittently. [It’s not because they get tired.]

This is very cool stuff [to me because coming out of undergrad and entering the workforce, high speed gas dynamics was my thang]: simulation of triple-point shock interaction.

In the article Formula One Contemplates CFD-only Future we read that some stakeholders “don’t think CFD technology is mature enough to obviate real-world wind tunnel testing just yet.” I agree with that sentiment but you shouldn’t interpret that as being anti-CFD. While motorsport has other constraints that I’d consider artificial (e.g. limiting simulation hours in the spirit of fairness), Computation vs test has never been a binary choice. Computation complements testing, testing validates computation. Computation provides detailed insights unobtainable from testing, testing covers scenarios that computation currently can’t handle. This is as good a place as any to cite the old mantra: no one believes the computation except for the person who did it; everyone believes the test except for the person who did it.

I’ll let you decide whether to read this Road & Track article about a “stunningly” low-drag Mercedes based on the opening sentence. “The air hasn’t changed in the 100-plus years since the beginning of the automotive era.” [Faulkner’s “Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting” it ain’t.]

It’s been a while since I climbed on this soap box but this publication in Nature gives me an excuse: The Misuse of Colour in Science Communication by Crameri, Shephard, and Heron.

What’s new in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ 2302? Overset meshes, ARM support, GPUs, multiphase and more.

Here’s a 10 minute video demonstration of mesh generation using Salome.

Here are 88 pages of freely-available course notes in book format for deep learning and computational physics by Ray, Pinti, and Oberai.

FluidX3D v2.1 was released.

Long-time readers know that Colossal is one of my favorite websites for discovering art and artists and their description of Zai Divecha’s paper sculptures as “mesmerizing” is spot on. I love how the shadows turn these works into a black & white motif, a simplicity of palette that I find incredibly appealing. Plus there’s the balance of using paper (typically flat) and folding it into the 3rd dimension. To see these in person must be a real joy because they will exhibit motion based on the lighting and the viewer’s movement.

Read more on Colossal and at the artist’s website.