NVIDIA maintains a CFD resource page on their website with many technical reports and code samples about GPU-accelerated CFD.
The former Belmont Technology is now Onshape, “a venture-funded startup founded by members of the original SolidWorks team plus top engineers from the CAD, data center, mobile and streaming media industries.” [Draw your own conclusions about what their products will be like.]
CD-adapco and SpaceClaim announced STAR-SpaceClaim, a module for SpaceClaim Engineer that provides 3D model transfer to STAR-CCM+ in a manner that eliminates the need for geometry clean-up.
I don’t remember where I saw this first, but it’s a racing bike paint job that mimics FEA results on the structure. Click the image to link to its source.
One of the 3 winning entries from PTC’s holiday design contest. Design by Vladimir Palffy. Image from ptc.com.
Flight of the Bumblebee
Due to their relatively small size, micro air vehicles (what the mainstream media would probably call span-challenged drones) suffer from a lack of controllability in unsteady flowfields. In order to come up with ideas for improving this situation, researchers at Harvard put bumblebees in a wind tunnel in the wake of a circular cylinder and observed how they manage to fly in a relatively unperturbed manner. You’ll have to click through to see the video and find out what they learned. See the article and video at BBC News. See the research paper at the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Photo of a bee in a wind tunnel. Image from BBC News.
Bonus: Even though it looks like what happens when I try to make RoTel (R) cheese dip, watch how this block of Velveeta (R) cheese gives a red hot nickle ball a hard time. I declare cheese to be the winner but wonder if this is the best use for the cheese product given the current shortage. But apparently there is no shortage of hot balls of nickle.
CEI announced that CPFD Software will bundle their EnSight software with CPFD’s Barracuda for visualization of computational particle fluid dynamics solutions of fluidized reactors. In a related blog post, CEI shares examples of Barracuda solutions visualized in EnSight. Also see image below.
DEVELOP3D writes about how SpaceClaim‘s broadening user community has resulted in many new capabilities that make it a “slick tool.”
WindSim AS launched a cloud-based version of their CFD toolset for wind turbine analysis.
Screen capture from a EnSight video of a Barracuda CFD solution of a gasifier showing volume fraction of particles. Image from CEI.
Applications
NASA’s work on reducing aircraft noise is described in this article from International Science Grid This Week. Simulations performed using Exa’s PowerFLOW have shown how a new device can decrease flap-generated noise. (Noise is the number one complaint reported to the FAA.)
CFD solutions computed using STAR-CCM+ for the latest bicycle racing helmet from Louis Garneau compared to within 4% of wind tunnel test results. See image below.
[If you have the stomach for it.] Read this article about rooftop water collection tanks in New York City. [There's no CFD in here but it's a very practical example of everyday fluids.]
Alert reader Walker B. pointed me at this video of the dynamic patterns on the surface of heated soap bubbles. Click image (from New Scientist) for the video. Email FYFD for an explanation of the science.
Grid Generation the Hard Way
Back in the day, grid generation could mean a Fortran DATA statement. [Look it up, kids.] Sometimes it felt like you were drawing the grid by hand.
Which is exactly what artist Susie MacMurray does in her series of pen on paper gauze bandage drawings. You’ll have to take my word for it that the image below pales in comparison to the real thing which is quite intricate and detailed. I had the pleasure of seeing one of these drawings during a recent visit to the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. [She would probably not take kindly to a suggestion to apply a little smoothing with an elliptic PDE based method.]
Virtual Grid released VRMesh v8.0 for point cloud processing.
Here are a couple of articles on the proposed solution of the Navier-Stokes existence and uniqueness problem: from New Scientist and The Blaze. [As originally seen on FYFD.]
Desktop Engineering writes about the appification of CFD or more specifically the browser-based CFD applications from Altair.
Evolution of the performance improvements to the Cassutt racing aircraft. Image from CEI.
Mesh Generation Deja Wha?
We learn many things from this overview of mesh generation in CFD. Much of what we learn is unusual. And much more sounds eerily familiar. Here’s some of the unusual stuff:
“three-dimensional CFD renderings” are the most preferable form of mesh.
CFD comes in 2D, 3D, 4D, and 5D forms. [Why stop at 5?]
To achieve the best CFD results “it is recommended to outsource professional services for mesh or grid generation.”
And that image of a structured, multi-block grid for the Aachen turbine, I swear I’ve seen that somewhere before.
Git Yer Meshing Kicks
Do you think you’d generate better meshes while wearing a pair of New Balance 890v4? Honestly, it probably wouldn’t hurt.
Full car STAR-CCM+ thermal simulation visualized using FieldView. Image from Intelligent Light.
Intelligent Light will be presenting their work on transient visualization and postprocessing of a full car thermal simulation at the Star Global Conference.
This video shows what happens when a land mine explodes beneath a tank. The simulation was done with Dytran, the visualization with EnSight.
I recently became aware of the site hgpu.org for High Performance Computing on Graphics Processing Units. They list nearly 300 articles on fluid dynamics.
From the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering comes this CFD study of cyclists riding in formation. (Registration required for full article.)
I would share news of the winner of CD-adapco’s academic poster contest but the blog post I could read earlier now tells me “You are not authorized to access this page.”
The Zipp SL-70 Aero handlebar was designed with CFD.
The title of this article from Fast Company is What Happens When An Ex-NASA Engineer Drops Paint Into Fish Tanks my first reaction was “The fish die.” Which would be bad when I think about my Betta named Hank swimming away here in my office. Kim Keever’s photographs (shown upside down) are from the series titled Across the Volumes.
Artist Kim Keever photographs industrial paint dropped into a 200 gallon fish tank.
This and That
We often complain about our CAD colleagues, or more precisely we complain about the usefulness of the models we get from them for CFD. GrabCAD has prepared a report that gives us non-CAD people a little insight into the challenges CAD people face. For example, their #1 time waster is helping non-CAD users take screen shots.
Cyon Research is surveying the CAD world again. If you spend 40 minutes answering their questions you’ll get a free copy of the final report ($1,995 value).
Are you at the mercy of the mesh? This is the hypothetical question explored by Convergent Science in Desktop Engineering.
Speaking of Convergent Science, their use of the DDT debugger is profiled by Allinea.
Dear NASA: No more rainbow color scales, please. [This article on visual.ly is a couple of years old but the topic came up this week again during a Twitter convo so I thought revisiting the issue was a good idea.]
Beta CAE will be providing a dedicated pre- and post-processing environment for Moldex3D.
Kitware has several job openings including visualization software developer and GUI software developer.
I know many CFDers who are cyclists, from the leisurely weekend nature rider to the hardcore racer. Riding at night can be dangerous when the terrain is uncertain. Lumigrids to the rescue. This handlebar mounted light projects a grid onto the road surface in front of you. Obstructions like potholes and curbs are revealed as warps in the projected grid.
Over on Slideshare you’ll find CFD: Modern Applications, Challenges and Future Trends. [See slide 8 for a provocative value judgement. Phew - meshing not cited as a contemporary challenge. Boo - "mesh-free methods" cited as a future trend.]
The Virtual Engineer summarizes the recent NAFEMS Americas 2014 event and came away with three trends.
System Simulation
Knowledge Capture – Lack of expertise leads to low/poor adoption of simulation. [See here for more on this.]
This is Wartsila’s FPP (fixed pitch propeller) Opti Design, designed in part with CFD. Image from Maritime Executive. Click image for article.
Not CFD
Because my first “real” job was doing computational work related to wind tunnel testing (running a method of characteristics code for models to be put in NASA Glenn’s 10×10 supersonic tunnel) I still have fondness for these test facilities. The photo below, taken from FYFD, captures the scale of some of the test infrastructure we’ve lost; specifically, AEDC’s supersonic tunnel.
The scale of AEDC’s supersonic wind tunnel is impressive as evidenced by this vintage photo. Image from FYFD.
Software & Business
SCIRun, an environment for modeling and simulation, now includes biomedical components.
Exa had a good first quarter with revenue of $13.8 million (85% licensing, 15% projects) for a 10% increase year-over-year. [Reminder: I'm interested in Exa's business performance because they are the only all-CFD, publicly traded company that I'm aware of.]
This is interesting. Graebert announced that they’re working on a DWG CAD editor (not just a viewer) for Android tablets. Actually, the really interesting part is buried in the promise of a “new tablet-specific user interface.”
Materialise’s 3-matic has joined Altair’s Partner Alliance.
The CAD Insider writes briefly about CONVERGE CFD.
Jonty Hurwitz works at the intersection of science and art. I believe from the title of his painting The Strong and the Lonely that he really understands mesh generation.
He shared with me a few thoughts on the difference between meshes for art and meshes for science and I’ve paraphrased them below.
A mesh for art needs to touch on a deeper meaning than just the mesh itself. It is the responsibility of the artist to attribute this meaning and convey it. In a way, the engineering “market” is easy, it’s about making something that resonates with a wider group.
A mesh for art needs to evoke some kind of emotional reaction (other than boredom). [My god, he really does get meshing.]
A mesh for art needs to challenge the norm in some way, push the boundaries beyond the way engineers see it.
Tecplot announced the release of Tecplot 360 EX with new technology they call SZL which promises 92% less memory usage and a 9.6x speed-up over previous versions. In addition, the software’s UI has been redone using Qt.
Sandia’s S3D direct numerical simulation software imposes serious challenges on postprocessing.
Desktop Engineering’s Kenneth Wong wrote one of the best overviews of simulation in the cloud I’ve read so far. [Paradoxically, reading it made me think that the more automated a solution is, the smarter the user has to be.]
Mr. Wong is on a roll: here he writes about why CAD interoperability remains a problem.
Composite image of CFD visualization from Tecplot 360 EX. Image from Tecplot.
From International Science Grid This Week comes a photo essay on immersive environments. [If any of you regularly use a tool like this to investigate your CFD data sets, please comment on this post and tell us how useful it is.]
Simscale has open positions for computer scientists and mechanical engineers.
Flow Science was one of 10 firms awarded a grant from the Venture Acceleration Fund.
If you use the DAFUL multi-body dynamics software you might be interested in use of EnSight to visualize its results.
What’s the future of 32-bit builds? [I'm interested in this also. Building Pointwise for both 32-bit and 64-bit is excessive in light of my opinion that the vast majority of people use the 64-bit builds. How might people react if we stopped delivering 32-bit builds?]
CD-adapco announced the release of STAR-CD v4.22 with improved physical modeling and preprocessing.
Music to Mesh via Math
We know how music sounds. But what does it look like?
When Texas A&M’s Prof. Tim Davis isn’t developing algorithms and programs used in MATLAB and Google Street View he develops algorithms involving force-directed graph visualization and other technologies to convert sound into sight.
Here’s New Order’s Blue Monday visualized with each note as a line and each tone as a color. For more examples of Prof. Davis’ work and details about how it’s done visit his website at notesartstudio.com.
New Order’s Blue Monday is visualized in mesh-like form by Texas A&M computer science professor Tim Davis. Image from notesartstudio.com with permission.
The Pointwise User Group Meeting 2014 will soon be here – 29-30 October in Anaheim, California. To celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary the event is free – but you still have to register, please.
A full day of seminars on the latest and greatest Pointwise capabilities including a preview of the new overset grid assembly feature suite and the special short course – chosen by you – on advanced structured grid generation.
Stanford is hosting a symposium entitled “Mathematics, Computing & Design – Where Analysis and Creativity Combine” to celebrate Antony Jameson’s 80th birthday. [I simply wonder whether I'll be alive at age 80. To also be working at a high level like Jameson at that age would be too much to ask. Hell, to be that productive now would be a miracle for me.]
Etsy seller Fabulous Cat Papers is offering notebooks hand-embroidered with meshes (and other designs). You’ll be the envy of the office or classroom with one of these.
Wofram introduced Tweet-a-Program. If you tweet a Wolfram Language program to @WolframTaP it will reply with the answer. [I don't know their language well enough to do anything interesting, otherwise I'd show you an example.]
From Plastics Today comes this article about resolving boundary layers for mold filling simulations with Moldex3D. Click image for article.
Computers and Computing
Between mobile devices and the cloud you can argue that most everyone is walking around with a supercomputer in their hand. Because of that, two things become important in this age of pervasive supercomputing: a fundamental understanding of computational principles and sufficient network capacity.
Here are six myths of high performance computing: Part 1 and Part 2.
Ribbonfarm manages to weave together a tale involving flow pacing (the manner of injecting chemicals during water treatment), software delivery (the “UX of time”), and an original piece of music in The Rhythms of Information. [And don't forget to listen to the music.]
Autodesk plans to convert all customers to subscription licensing over the next couple of years. Two notable factoids from the article are 1) the subscription model gets all customers on the most recent versions as opposed to perpetual licensees who are several versions behind and 2) for their entry level products the subscription model represents a 30% increase in revenue over current licensing.
“Ultimately, it is likely that much more engineering design and computation will occur in the cloud.” True?
The beta program for FieldView 15 will begin soon, giving you early access to features like an improved OpenFOAM reader and a new “open licensed” tool for viewing XDB files.
sourceflux writes on the topic of OpenFOAM source code testing. [With a nice photo of a nuclear detonation from the U.S. Tumbler-Snapper tests from 1952.]
A preview of enhanced morphing in STAR-CCM+ v9.06. See link above.
Hand Knitted Mesh
Artist Alyson Shotz was a recent guest on The Modern Art Notes podcast and I really need to find the time to listen to her episode, especially after being greeted by this image when visiting her website.
The image above seems to be a computer model of her piece Untitled, 2013 made from hand-dyed yarn and pins on wall from an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.
P.S. I feel compelled to apologize for the “hot mess” that his post is. Next week might not be any better and there will not be a post on Halloween because we’ll all be basking in post user group meeting glory and beginning a weekend celebration of Pointwise’s 20th anniversary.
You might have asked yourself when it would be a good time to outsource your CFD. Here’s a list including #4 Partnering to Get Advice from Domain Experts.
Blade vortices off a horizontal axis wind turbine. Image from Wind Power Engineering. See link above.
Computers & CAD
Have a need for a million core hours of computing time? Enter Charity Engine’s contest and you might be one of three lucky folks who win that prize. Terms and conditions include:
Must use open source software
Application must be “ethically sound”
Use up to 50,000 nodes
48 hour to 30 month usage window
Also on the topic of big computers, NCSA is making their supercomputers available for CFD use.
WorldCAD Access shares news about the rise of Linux for CAD software. [I think 40-50% of our installed based for mesh generation is Linux.]
If you take a survey on CAD virtualization you’ll get a copy of the final report of the results.
The interaction of a rotorcraft with a ship’s airwake. CFD by Kestrel, viz by FieldView. Image from Intelligent Light. Click image for article.
Applications & Reading
Direct Numerical Simulation of Flow and Acoustic Fields Around an Air-Reed Instrument with Tone Holes. [How many of you played one of these instruments in elementary school? I did.]
Screen capture from a video of a combustion simulation. Application by SpaceX, video hosted by Nvidia. Click image for link to original article.
Synthesizing Structure & Chaos
That certainly is an apt metaphor for CFD mesh generation: providing a synthetic structure on which the chaos of turbulent fluid motion is to be computed.
From his website, artist Don Sorenson‘s work is described thusly:
“Formally, his paintings are amalgams of the polar opposites with which large stylistic swings in the history of art have been described: intellect and emotion, order and randomness, control and accident, structure and chaos, straight line and amorphous color, gloss and matte, literal flatness and illusionistic depth, figure and ground and so forth. It is through a synthesis of art history that Sorenson finds his unique place in the world of contemporary art.”
Altair: Altair Technologies and FluiDyna are collaborating on GPU-accelerated CFD. On a related note, Altair will be the exclusive worldwide reseller of the nanoFluidX technology.
ANSYS: ANSYS was recognized at The Engineering Simulation Show for its quality, innovation, and financial performance as company of the year. Also, the company’s GAAP revenue for Q1 was $218 million, up 1%.
AutoCAD: The Engineers Guide to Drinks was created 1972 on a lark to test plotters. It found new life recently (download the DWG file here) and is now being converted to 3D.
CAD: The worldwide CAD market in 2014 was $8 billion and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 4% through 2017.
CAE Associates: Structural finite element modeling came to rescue of Adam, a marble statue by Tullio Lombardo (1460-1532), that fell and broke into 28 large pieces and an uncountable number of fragments in 2002. FEA helped assure museum curators that the repairs (pins and glue) would work while also being reversible if needed.
FEA contributed to the repair of Tullio Lombardo’s Adam. Image from CAE Associates. See link above.
Caelus: Version 5.04 of Caelus is available for download.
CD-adapco: In case you missed the event, pretend you were there with CD-adapco’s STAR Global Conference 2015 photo gallery. Or you could read Monica Schnitger’s summary of the event. In which you’ll learn what STAR stands for.
CFD simulation performed by Los Alamos to study vortex induced motion on offshore drilling rigs. Image from Int’l Science Grid This Week. See link above.
Edwin, Colin: Musician Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree, Metallic Taste of Blood, O.R.k.) released a new digital-only EP titled Mesh. [I am a big fan of Colin’s music and am using his album’s title as an excuse to post here. It’s my blog after all.]
Mesh by Colin Edwin. Image from Colin Edwin’s blog. See link above.
EnSight: CEI asks whether 32-bit support is still wanted for EnSight beginning in 2016. Also, there’s now a data converter from EMSolution to EnSight.
ESI: The ESI Group acquired the assets of Ciespace, the cloud-based CFD provider. Ciespace will [already has?] begun integrating ESI’s software into Ciespace’s open, web-services platform. Monica Schnitger shared her thoughts on this deal.
Cutaway view of a hex-dominant mesh for a filter mount using the method by Baudouin et al. Image from Advanced Modeling and Simulation in Engineering Services. See link above.
Hi-Tech: Three ways to get value from your CFD when you use it as a precursor to prototype tests. #1 Measure things you can’t measure with a test.
Indy 500: Honda’s aero kit for their Indy car chassis was developed using CFD.
Leap CFD: A hybrid RANS-LES approach was used to model flow over terrain and an urban environment as part of a wind engineering study related to energy harvesting. [Be certain to watch the video.]
MeshUp is a Kickstarter-funded mashup tool for meshes. Image from Kickstarter. See link above. [Do not question why you’d want to mashup the Utah teapot and the Stanford bunny.]
Nagoya: CD-adapco opened an office in Nagoya, Japan.
NASA: If you can demonstrate a 1000x speed-up of a CFD solution over FUN3D NASA may award you $500,000. [An “X-Prize” for CFD? Hell yes. [Note: X-Prize is probably someone’s trademark so forgive the usage.]] There’s a link at the site to NASA’s request for information as they try to decide whether to pull the trigger on this idea.
PADT: CoresOnDemand.com, an HPC resource for ANSYS users, was launched by PAD-T. [I can’t help getting hungry for Thai food every time I see PADT come up in the news.]
ReFRESCO-Operation: MARIN’s ReFRESCO-Operation is a partnership with clients for marine applications of CFD using the ReFRESCO CFD code and MARIN’s compute cluster.
SimuTech Group: ANSYS designated SimuTech Group as an Elite Channel Partner. SimuTech is said to be the largest full-service provider of ANSYS’s CAE software in North America.
SolidWorks: Here’s a checklist for running SolidWorks Flow Simulation.
SpaceX: Watch this video of a GPU-based simulation of SpaceX’s rocket engine.
Tech Soft 3D: Tech Soft 3D announced the new HOOPS Cloud Platform and HOOPS Desktop Platform.
Tecplot: In the 4th installment of their “trillion cell challenge,” Tecplot describes their approach to the input/output bottleneck when visualizing massive computational simulations. See also their 300 billion cell results.
Performance improvement of the latest version of Tecplot versus previous versions for handling massive datasets. Image from Tecplot. See link above.
TotalCAE: Billing themselves as the “IT department for CFD engineers,” TotalCAE offers a number of products including a private cloud, turnkey HPC cluster with support for all popular CFD solvers.
Wirth Research: F-1 designer Nick Wirth’s team used CFD to design an aerodynamic package for Scania R-series trucks that reduces drag by 10% relative to other add-on kits.
6SigmaET: Future Facilities’ CFD solver 6SigmaET was awarded Product of the Year at the Engineering Simulation Awards Show.
Stellar – Meshed – Caves
Artist Julien Salaud‘s 3D, immersive, polygonal, sculptures are made from thread that’s illuminated by UV light. The result is like walking through the craziest mesh you’ve ever generated. See more at This is Colossal.
Travis Carrigan, Senior Engineer on the Sales & Marketing team.
Have you ever been to the Idaho Potato Museum? If not, you should go. They’ll give you a free potato at the end of the tour…or at least they used to. I’ve been there several times. The museum sits in my hometown of Blackfoot, Idaho.
It was back home where I became a pilot and where I spent all my free time bumming around the local airport working on airplanes. Next, I moved to Arlington, Texas where I ended up studying Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Before receiving my bachelor’s degree in 2009, I worked as a Quality Assurance Engineer on the Boeing 787 program at Vought Aircraft. The following spring, as I wrapped up my junior year, I was offered an internship at Pointwise on the Technical Support team. I took it immediately.
I spent my first summer at Pointwise working with Carolyn Woeber, the manager of our support team. At the time I was responsible for the functional testing of Gridgen and one of the earlier releases of Pointwise. During the summer I learned enough about grid generation to be productive and knew that I’d be doing CFD from then on.
After receiving my bachelor’s degree I started my second internship at Pointwise, this time on the Sales & Marketing team as an applications engineer working with Chris Sideroff. Chris now distributes and supports our software in Canada. I meshed, and meshed, and meshed, every day, all day, all summer. In just a few months I had generated meshes for geometries in nearly every application area where we have a customer. I was hooked.
I continued working as an intern at Pointwise throughout graduate school. During that time I was working mornings at Pointwise, taking a full course load in the afternoons at UTA, and spending my nights in the CFD lab performing vertical axis wind turbine design optimization. As an intern at that time I helped support the sales process and generated content for webinars, videos, and articles. Most of my original work is still floating around our website.
Just before I wrapped up my master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering at UTA in 2011, I was offered a full time position with Pointwise as a Senior Engineer on the Sales & Marketing team. Since then I’ve been heavily involved in the production of our technical marketing content and sales process.
My primary area of responsibility is new sales. In order to sell our software, I work closely with prospective customers to help strengthen their CFD process by introducing them to Pointwise. Often an engineer will contact us with a meshing problem and it’s my responsibility to determine if Pointwise is the right fit for their application and help them discover the solution throughout a fully supported evaluation. This is a very technical process and one where I’m always learning about new CFD applications and challenges.
Location: Fort Worth, TX
Current position: Senior Engineer, Sales & Marketing
One word that best describes how you work: Wholeheartedly
What software or tools do you use every day?
I live in Outlook. Supporting everyone who is thinking about evaluating Pointwise and those currently working an evaluation means I’m reaching out to potential customers, working with system administrators on installation, fielding technical questions with engineers, and discussing terms and prices with buyers. I work hard to achieve inbox zero by the end of the day because that means I was able to help everyone who reached out to me.
Google Chrome is my window into all our online and web accessible content. I use Chrome to access and manage our Glyph script exchange on GitHub. Throughout the day I’ll look for any Pointwise or meshing questions that arrive via CFD Online. I use TweetDeck to monitor various feeds and tweet events and other CFD related content. Our YouTube page is where we host all our video content and I’m actively uploading new videos and responding to comments. We use YouTrack to log feature requests and bugs in our software, so I keep an eye on that and log any requests that come from discussions with any clients I’m working with. Our internal wiki provides a ton of useful information and is where we work with our developers to define the requirements for new features. I’m currently working on a couple new feature requirements that I can’t wait to share with you! But most of my time spent in Chrome is working with Sage CRM, our customer relationship management software where I track all incoming evaluation requests, quotation requests, and those evaluating the software.
Throughout the day I’ll use Pidgin to chat with my coworkers. A quick message can save a phone call or an email. I use vim when writing or editing Glyph scripts and Cygwin to access my remote Linux workstation to run CFD calculations or generate large meshes. The Microsoft Office suite of tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, no matter how hard I try to find alternatives, keep me productive. I record a lot of videos including webinars, in-depth meshing videos, and tutorials for #TutorialTuesday. Camtasia makes it easy to capture my screen so I can produce content and get it online quickly. And it goes without saying, but I use Pointwise every single day.
There are two more tools I use that I couldn’t do my job without: GoToMeeting and the phone. GoToMeeting has become such an important part of my job that I can’t imagine working without it. When someone would like to see Pointwise in action, or show me something they’re working on and get feedback, in about a minute I can have a meeting up and running. Often one GoToMeeting session will save an entire day’s worth of email, and I can record it and send it to the client. The phone is similar in that a single phone call can save time, it’s more personal, and allows us to escape the computer for a few minutes.
I’ve moved around our building a lot. I worked in two different conference rooms during my internships, spent a summer in our server room running CFD calculations, worked for about a year in a corner, then an office, and now a corner office. I have a great view of downtown Fort Worth, three large desks, a couple bookshelves, and a plant.
I like to make wherever I’m working comfortable, and by that I mean cluttered with little gizmos and fun stuff. I’ve amassed a small collection of bobble heads against my will and a few really nice aircraft models. Some of the more fun stuff sits on my desk. The Useless Machine provides a lot of entertainment and they have a great return policy—if you don’t find it completely useless, return it for a full refund. Last year I assembled the Strandbeest kit by Gakken and it’s earned a permanent place on my desk. My wife is a Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Arlington’s Research Institute (UTARI) and works in the Biomedical Technologies group. While working on a project involving casting, she made a cast of her hand, which she painted green, and which I stole and proudly display on my desk. I get a kick out of the awkward stares when customers drop by to chat. My wife is very creative and has contributed a number of laser cut wood models to my collection.
What are you currently working on?
A lot of things. I get anxious when I’m not working, so I always have something to do. Most of the work I do is in support of those evaluating Pointwise. I can’t reveal specifics, but what I can say is that during any given week I could be meshing an automotive geometry, a full aircraft, a turbine blade, writing a Glyph script to automate part or all of a meshing process, making a video to demonstrate a particular feature or workflow, or running a CFD calculation to validate a particular meshing strategy. When someone commits to an evaluation, I’m 100% all in to help them discover Pointwise and offer the same level of support they can expect once they become a customer.
Lately I’ve been working on the DrivAer, a realistic external automotive geometry proposed by the Institute of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics at the Technische Universität München. Often automotive geometry is extremely complex, and the DrivAer is no different with over 15,000 unique surfaces. Working with others in this industry I’ve found that a lot of engineers use discrete automotive models (STLs) and meshing algorithms that are tuned for surface wrapping. The difficulty with this approach is that discrete geometry can degrade accuracy and lacks the topological information that analytic models can provide. However, to take advantage of analytic models coming from CAD requires geometry cleanup and robust meshing strategies. Our goal with this project has been to demonstrate such strategies and best practices for cleaning complex analytic CAD often encountered in the automotive industry and automatically generate boundary layer resolved grids. The project has been successful and we’ll be presenting this work coupled with shape deformation and optimization at the 10th OpenFOAM Workshop.
Hybrid volume mesh for the DrivAer geometry colored by element volume.
I’ve been involved with our webinars and videos since we started producing them back in 2010. I began by producing only the technical content, then drove the software while others presented, and now I organize and produce our webinars with a customer and/or a software partner. Pointwise webinars give people the opportunity to see the software being used in the real world and for many different applications. At the moment I’m working on our next webinar which will go live later this summer. I’m also involved in producing short tutorials in a segment we call #TutorialTuesdays on YouTube and Twitter, along with longer videos that demonstrate the entire meshing process.
What would you say is your meshing specialty?
As I’ve mentioned, one of my roles is pre-sales support during the evaluation stage. Therefore, I must be well versed in our software and best practices so I can help new users get up to speed quickly. That being said, I’d say my meshing specialty is unstructured viscous meshing using T-Rex.
Having worked many different meshing applications over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate the intricacies of getting something rather automated to do what I need it to do for a complex geometry. I know how T-Rex works, I know how and when to apply it, and I know how to get it to do what I want. The secret is all in the surface mesh.
Any tips for our users?
If you’re stuck, contact us. Zach already mentioned it in his post, but I’ll reiterate. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have a question, comment, or concern. Believe it or not, we love hearing from you. The more feedback the better! We are your grid generation subject matter experts and are available to help in any way we can. Feel free to contact us by phone (1-800-4PTWISE), email (support@pointwise.com), the web, or request a GoToMeeting invitation.
It’s probably scriptable. Glyph scripting is a powerful tool. It gives you access to every command in the Pointwise user interface. However, unlike in the GUI, with Glyph you can string together multiple commands and write your own macros and features. I call this hacking Pointwise since you can get the software to do some pretty incredible things like solving a Rubik’s Cube or playing Pong. A more productive application would involve splitting multiple connectors simultaneously. In Pointwise you would have to split one connector at a time. Another great application is taking a connector, copying, translating, and then stretching it to fit between two points. These three separate tasks can be combined into a single script.
T-Rex is all about the surface mesh. The quality of a volume mesh is highly dependent on the quality of the surface mesh. Keep in mind that when running T-Rex you are advancing elements off of the surface mesh. If your surface mesh quality is poor, the volume mesh will also be poor. So if you encounter a poor quality element in the volume, look at the surface mesh in the vicinity. Not always, but more often than not there is a spacing or something else not set correctly on the surface. Below are my recommendations before generating a volume mesh using T-Rex.
Select all the domains on the surface of your geometry (exclude match domains) and examine the area ratio. The area ratio should be less than 4 everywhere. If you find you have a high area ratio, chances are there is a spacing mismatch at a node. When advancing elements off the surface, smaller elements will reach isotropy (T-Rex stop criteria) sooner than larger elements. This means that if you have a large area ratio you have a small element adjacent to a large element and when advancing into the volume mesh the front could stop prematurely.
With the surface domains still selected, examine the maximum included angle. Keep this as low as possible. Geometry is going to dictate this, so high angles may not be avoidable all the time. I like to keep my max angle less than 150. If I have an element that’s higher than that I’ll decide whether I need to modify the surface mesh in that region either by joining domains, or by approximating the geometry to eliminate the poor angle.
Assuming you haven’t assembled the block yet, take your grid into Grid, Merge and ensure you have no lamina connectors. Lamina connectors on the interior of your grid indicate gaps in the surface mesh and should be fixed or else a watertight volume cannot be generated.
What project are you most proud of and why?
It’s a tie between two Glyph scripting projects. I began working on the first project just before I was hired full time. It was a project for a Quiet Aircraft Technology program member and I worked with Nick Wyman to automate the meshing for conical and chevron jet nozzles. The Glyph scripts we wrote automatically generated overset, multiblock structured grids given an input nozzle geometry. We developed a user interface for each script that exposed all the meshing parameters necessary to generate the grids from scratch so the end-user wouldn’t have to load up the Pointwise GUI. Once the grid had been generated, the script would export all the component grids and PEGASUS control file used for the overset grid assembly. Acoustic simulations were performed, requiring the grids to be of very high quality. To give you an idea how much time this saved the engineers, assembling a single grid by hand would take one to three days depending on the complexity of the nozzle. The script reduced that to under an hour.
Graphical user interface for the jet nozzle overset meshing Glyph script.
The second project was a Glyph scripting library I wrote to elevate the order of linear elements generated using Pointwise. Using the grid coordinate enumerator written in Glyph by David Garlisch, a Senior Engineer on our Product Development team, I was able to gain access to the grid model, compute the nodal locations for the additional points including placing them on the CAD geometry where appropriate, and generate the higher order connectivity for each element. The script was successfully coupled with a script generated by Cameron, Compression Systems that automatically generated multiblock structured finite element grids for open-faced centrifugal impellers. In the end we had a set of automated tools for generating higher order hexahedral grids to improve the prediction of centrifugal impeller failure modes.
The inducer view of the centrifugal impeller illustrates the use of quadratic hexahedral elements. This mesh was generated automatically.
What CFD solver and postprocessor do you use most often?
When I need to validate a meshing strategy for a particular application or when I’m working on a project that requires I run a calculation, I rely on a few open source CFD solvers. I’m primarily using OpenFOAM on my Linux workstation for incompressible, steady and unsteady simulations. I’ve been using OpenFOAM for more than five years now and worked with David Garlisch to develop a plugin so Pointwise users can seamlessly export a grid to OpenFOAM without the need to run any additional meshing utilities.
Recently I’ve been using Caelus, a restructured derivative of OpenFOAM that runs on my Windows machine. Because it was forked from OpenFOAM, it’s an environment I’m comfortable working in. That being said, under the covers Caelus is different. Solvers are only included if they’ve been validated against published data, the turbulence models and wall functions have been rewritten, and a number of library enhancements have been made including updated interpolation and gradient schemes.
I’m also using SU2, an open source CFD solver developed out of Stanford University. I have SU2 running on both my Windows machine and my Linux workstation and primarily use it for external aerodynamics calculations. Over the past couple years we’ve done a lot of work with the SU2 team. Last year we hosted a webinar and discussed supersonic aircraft shape design using the Lockheed Martin 1021, a test case from the AIAA Sonic Boom Prediction Workshop. As part of the project I wrote a Glyph script to generate free form deformation boxes and export the data to SU2 for shape deformation. A few months later we held a joint workshop at Stanford where we walked through the entire CFD process using Pointwise and SU2.
For postprocessing I use a mix of ParaView, EnSight by CEI, and Tecplot. My OpenFOAM environment is setup to load results directly into ParaView, and I’m using both EnSight and Tecplot for grid visualization and solution visualization. Our first joint webinar was hosted by Tecplot and we discussed an automated methodology for optimizing the aerodynamic performance of vertical axis wind turbine rotors, my master’s work. We’ve hosted a couple webinars with CEI. One involved North American Eagle and an attempt to break the land speed record, another with CRAFT Tech and analysis of cavitation and acoustics of a water injection pump.
Are you reading any interesting technical papers we should know about?
A few. I’m reading John Steinbrenner’s Construction of Prism and Hex Layers from Anisotropic Tetrahedra which describes T-Rex and more specifically the evolution of cell combination techniques. I’m also reading Aeroacoustic Simulations of a Nose Landing Gear using FUN3D on Pointwise Unstructured Grids by V.N. Vatsa, M.R. Khorrami, J. Rhoads, and D.P. Lockard. Both papers will be presented at AIAA Aviation. While working on the DrivAer grids and simulations I’ve been reading Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the DrivAer Model by A.I. Heft, T. Indinger, and N.A. Adams.
Recently I had the opportunity to attend one of Edward Tufte’s courses on Presenting Data and Information. John Chawner recently wrote an article describing a few of the highlights. After taking the course I started reading Beautiful Evidence. It’s a great book and I especially enjoyed the chapters on sparklines and the fundamental principles of analytical design.
Do you plan on attending any conferences or workshops this year?
Absolutely! This month alone I’ll be at three different conferences and workshops. June 15th-19th I’ll be in Montreal at TurboExpo. Please drop by the booth and we can chat about your turbomachinery meshing applications. The following week I’ll be at AIAA Aviation. Be sure to attend our Let’s Talk Meshing Workshop on June 21st before the conference. You’ll learn how to use our latest overset meshing tools, get an introduction to Suggar++, see some new Pointwise features, I’ll be teaching you how to get started with Glyph scripting, and our president will present the product roadmap for Pointwise. You won’t want to miss it. The week after Aviation I’ll be in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the 10th OpenFOAM Workshop. There I’ll be presenting our work on the DrivAer automotive model. Come by and I’ll show you how Pointwise seamlessly integrates with OpenFOAM. The last week of July I’ll be in Orlando, Florida at the AIAA Propulsion and Energy conference.
What do you do when you’re not generating meshes?
Sleep.
Just kidding. I have a lot of different hobbies from running CFD on a Raspberry Pi to building a home flight simulator. After graduate school I started reading again and am a big fan of Daniel Suarez and his books. Right now I’m reading Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte, To Sell Is Human by Daniel H. Pink, The Everything Store by Brad Stone, and IT by Stephen King.
I do a lot of gaming on iOS, Android, PC, and the PS4. A few years ago I fell into indie gaming and discovered a unique world of art I never knew existed. I could recommend a dozen or more great indie titles, but anything by Amanita Design is absolutely perfect. Samorost, Machinarium, and Botanicula will leave you speechless.
Something else I discovered by chance was coffee. Those who know me know I’m coffee crazy. I’ve amassed a collection of more than ten different coffee makers, all manual brewers with different filtering mechanics. I could go on all day about coffee and the science and art of brewing but I won’t. Instead all I’ll tell you is that real coffee doesn’t taste like Starbucks or a K-cup. A real cup of coffee brewed properly will highlight flavors you never knew existed. Imagine drinking a cup of coffee so sweet that you don’t need to add sugar and so smooth that milk and cream are no longer necessary. The Hario V60 is the most natural way to brew a cup of coffee and gives you control of the brew ratio, grind size, water temperature, bloom time, and brew time. If you want to learn more you can visit my blog. Unfortunately it hasn’t been updated in a while, but there’s plenty of great content.
Few of my hobbies would be fun without someone to share them with. My wife’s a great sport and supportive of everything I do. The two of us do everything together and have recently taken up fishing near our home. She’s a phenomenal cook, a great travel companion, and my best friend. When I’m not generating meshes I’m spending time with her, sipping a coffee and relaxing.
What is some of the best CFD advice you’ve ever received?
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.” –George E. P. Box
If you had to pick a place to have dinner, where would you go?
My wife and I love to eat and try new restaurants wherever we go. Here in Fort Worth, Texas I would recommend Rodeo Goat for the best burger in DFW. If I were back home in Blackfoot, Idaho it would be Rupes. Be sure to try the fry sauce. In San Antonio, Texas I’d say Boudro’s on the Riverwalk. Seattle, Washington would be Elliott’s Oyster House, probably the best seafood place I’ve been to. In San Jose, California you’ve got to drop by Pizza Antica on Santana Row and when you’re finished walk across the street to the Tesla shop just for fun. In New York City definitely Xi’an Famous Foods for some authentic Chinese. If you’re in Albany, New York be sure to try Dave’s Gourmet & Exotic Burgers. It’s the only burger place I know of that sells a python, camel, and kangaroo burger. And lastly, when in Montreal you must visit Le Gourmand Restaurant.
A visualization of vortical flow downstream of a drilling rig. Image from Scientific Computing. See link below.
MUST READ: From our friends at ANSYS comes this story of how CFD was used to design a method of improving aircraft cabin air quality. Specifically, the study showed how to “effectively curb pathogen inhalation by up to 55 times and improve fresh air inhalation by more than 190%.” What makes this work even more amazing is the researcher’s age: Raymond Wang is only 17 years old.
CFD was used in a study of vortex induced motion of semisubmersible offshore drilling platforms.
And another [perhaps the same?] use of CFD for VIM. [But this one had a picture.]
Here’s an interesting compilation of research from the Symposium on Computer Animation including several fluids-related topics.
EnSight was used in a CAVE to visualize simulations of solar flares.
Using Tecplot Chorus an engineer can interrogate several CFD solutions simultaneously as shown in this example for a wing flap deflection. Image from Tecplot.
Tecplot released Tecplot Chorus 2015 R2, their software product for interrogating and comparing multiple parametric CFD solutions simultaneously. This new release includes new capabilities for identifying design points that are edges of the parametric space and improved tools for managing thousands of simulations.
CRAFT Tech has written a Fluent UDF for flames – specifically the interaction of turbulence and chemistry in a flame – and guest blogged about it on ANSYS’ site.
Rumor mill: AMD to go private and split into AMD and ATI again.
For Your Reading Pleasure
Best Practices for Scientific Computing targets scientists for whom writing programs isn’t their primary job but the tips are applicable to just about anyone.
Crossing a Line Somewhere for Somebody for Certain
Underwear model and CFD researcher named “world’s sexiest math’s teacher” is said to enjoy modeling “wet steam flow.” No cliche is left unused in this article.
All I have to say is:
I hope this is not the start of a trend.
I ask all the ladies to not objectify me and please respect me for my mind.
Mesh Art – Coincidence or Intent?
Nick Wyman, Pointwise’s director of applied research, was working on an unreleased version of our meshing software and pressed the wrong button. The result, shown below, was what he termed objet d’art.
Nick Wyman, Objet d’Art, 2015. Click to see full size image.
Perhaps you’re thinking “Ha ha, that’s not art.” Well, consider the following. During last week’s AIAA Aviation conference in Dallas, Prof. Robert Haimes (MIT) and I spent an afternoon on an art appreciation tour around DFW and eventually found ourselves at the Dallas Museum of Art standing in front of Alan Saret’s Deep Forest Green Dispersion (see images below).
What can you say now about meshes and art, intent and coincidence?
FieldView 15.1 is now available and includes surface flow lines and animated particle paths.
EnSight 10.1.5.a is now available and includes threaded pathlines.
A special thanks to our friends at Mentor Graphics for remembering their American cousins on July 4th with a Boston Tea Party themed simulation that resulted in the beautiful image shown below.
Screen capture from a CD-adapco simulation of a Hawker Hurricane water landing. [Feeds my love of WWII-era aircraft.] Click image for video.
Reading
ANSYS’ blog wants us to “think big” about the future of simulation. [I had a boss 30 years ago whose vision for CFD was that you should be able to sit down at a workstation and simply fly the plane via real-time simulation. Nice, but not actionable. Like having a vision for medicine which is “prevent all diseases.”]
Not CFD, but a cool simulation of solar plasma nonetheless. Video by NCSA. Click image for video.
SimScale is looking for the next #F1SimStar, i.e. the person who can make the most impressive visualization of airflow around a Formula-1 car. Deadline is “12.07.2015.” [As an American, I have no idea whether that’s December 7th or July 12th.] To support this contest they have posted three videos and other resources about simulations.
TechClarity wants you to participate in their survey if you’ve recently changed or are planning to change CAD tools. You might win a $20 Amazon gift card.
IBM’s 7 nanometer computer chip promises 4x the power of current designs. [Maybe Moore’s Law isn’t dead after all.]
Is the STL file format on it’s way out? DEVELOP3D shares news about the 3MF Consortium‘s efforts to promote a modern file format for 3D printing and other apps.
Sometimes a Banana is Just a Banana – And Other Times It’s a Mesh
Artist Dan Cretu has embarked on a series of wood-carvings of bananas that feature a mesh motif. There’s a joke in here somewhere about “banana included for scale” but I’ll leave that to you. [Joke from SNL included intentionally.] You can find more of Cretu’s banana sculptures here.
Correction: The artist informs me that the sculptures are not wood and that they are all rotten now.
Dan Cretu, Bananametric, 2015. Image from That’s Nerdalicious. See link above.
Bonus: From Monet to Riley, the role of geometry in abstract painting. As Mondrian said, he didn’t want to be limited to making mere imitations of the external world.
John Dreese, Senior Engineer on the Technical Support Team.
If America was a Ping Pong table, I would be the ball. I grew up in Ohio, bounced out to California during the dotcom implosion, bounced back to Ohio to work at a wind tunnel, and finally bounced down to Texas where I’ve been for 13 years. Everything you’ve heard about Texas is true. It is a dry heat. Houses are cheap. Individuals can be all hat, yet have no cattle.
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. My parents encouraged me to follow my interests which tended towards airplanes at a young age. I eventually attended The Ohio State University where I earned both a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering. As a student there, I also worked part time at the OSU Aero/Astro Research Laboratory. I got to see how the sausage was made, doing everything from milling model parts on the Bridgeport to calibrating wind tunnel instrumentation using mercury! During that time, I also worked at Beechwold Ace Hardware. I credit that experience with teaching me how to help customers.
My proudest moment at OSU was being part of the team that built and raced a human powered vehicle during the 1994 International Human Powered Vehicle Association (IHPVA) Championship held in Eureka, California. Our vehicle was called the Buckeye Bullet and it was fast. To keep the weight down, we built it out of fiberglass, Kevlar and aluminum. We had a crushing defeat that involved, unfortunately, a parked Ford F-150. The whole project was one of the best learning experiences I’ve ever had.
The Buckeye Bullet human powered vehicle built and raced in the 1994 International Human Powered Vehicle Association Championship.
For graduate school, I worked on two projects. The first was a wind tunnel study of tail icing effects on a de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter; this even involved a short stint at Cleveland’s NASA Glenn where the flight testing took place. If you want to read the final report, you can get it here (yes, my one and only NASA publication and my name is spelled wrong on the coversheet).
The second and most important project in graduate school was the focus of my Master’s thesis: elliptical airfoils. The unique advantage of elliptical airfoils is that their performance is independent of whether the air is coming or going. I ran transonic wind tunnel tests and CFD analyses for our candidate airfoils. The whole research project was in support of the Boeing X-50 Dragonfly program, an experimental canard-rotor-wing (CRW) aircraft. Two prototypes were built and flown. They both crashed and the program was cancelled in 2006.
The Boeing X-50 Dragonfly canard-rotor-wing aircraft.
In the moments between graduate school projects, I started a fun shareware software project called the Super Numerical Airfoil Creation Kit, or SNACK for short. I eventually changed the name to DesignFOIL. The goal was a simple Windows software tool that would automagically generate NACA airfoil coordinates for wings and then run them through a virtual wind tunnel. The project is still going strong today.
My first long-term job in the real world was at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas. I was a store separation engineer for ten years, starting on the F-16, moving to the F-22, then ending up in Advanced Development Programs (i.e. The Skunkworks). My goal was to make sure that anything dropped from a high-speed airplane didn’t “float” back and destroy the airplane. I was honored to receive a Lockheed Aero Star Award in 2011 for some store separation simulations I did that saved the customer a few bucks.
In addition to the fun aviation-related stuff, I wrote an adventure novel called Red Hope after being inspired by the Mars Curiosity rover landing in 2012. The process of turning a one-page idea into a 58,000 word novel was very educational. I’ve clawed my way up to 12,475 on the Amazon best seller list; the guy in 12,474th place is proving to be a formidable challenger.
In 2012, a rare opportunity came up to join the Pointwise team. My work here has allowed me to expound upon the CFD roots that I established in graduate school. Grid generation is really the foundation for any good CFD solution, so it has to be done right. The subject of grid generation is pretty big, so I’m learning something new every day. One of the cool benefits of being at Pointwise is that I get to meet a lot of great people who are working on fascinating projects.
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Current position: Senior Engineer
Current computer: Windows7 64-bit, Xeon CPU @ 2GHz, 12GB of RAM
One word that best describes how you work: Easygoing
What software or tools do you use every day?
I use Pointwise every day, all day. For ancillary tasks, I use Outlook, Excel and Word. For DIY videos, I use Snagit to perform screen captures and PowerDirector to edit the Pointwise tutorial videos. For graphics generation, I use a combination of Paint Shop Pro and Paintbrush (yes, the Windows default). Believe it or not, I still use Notepad quite a bit too.
My desk is in a state of organized clutter. I know where everything is and which stack it’s in. My main monitor doubles as a post-it note holder. My desk is the last stop on the technical magazine rounds, so I literally have a Magazine Mountain on my desk with occasional avalanches.
What are you currently working on?
My regular work involves helping our customers use Pointwise in the most efficient manner possible. This involves answering daily questions, teaching our training classes, and producing tutorials for the software.
What would you say is your meshing specialty?
Between the two major styles of gridding, unstructured is definitely my strong suite. However, I’m working on a structured grid project to help refine my skills in that area. If I had a specialty here, it would probably be software installation, which is no small task if you consider how many operating systems we support. Somebody once said that I could install Pointwise on a potato. That was probably exaggeration.
Any tips for our users?
If you run into an issue that is holding back your progress, please contact us immediately. Email us at support@pointwise.com or call us at 1-800-4PTWISE. We are here to answer your questions from 8:00am to 5:00pm. If you don’t contact me, I’ll be forced to finally deal with Magazine Mountain or waste time trying to install Pointwise on taters.
What project are you most proud of and why?
I’m proud of the video tutorials that we make. These seem to be very popular and we have a lot lined up for production. I’m also proud of the features that I’ve helped get put into Pointwise. Probably the one you might recognize is the orient command for structured domains.
What CFD solver and postprocessor do you use most often?
I get to tinker with a lot of codes throughout the customer support process. With regard to solvers, that includes the likes of Fluent and OpenFOAM mostly. The same goes for postprocessors. Depending on what the customer is working with, I’ll find myself using Tecplot, EnSight, ParaView, etc…
Are you reading any interesting technical papers we should know about?
It’s not exactly a paper, but John D. Anderson Jr.’s “A History of Aerodynamics” is perfect for anybody interested in why aeronautical engineering looks the way it does.
Do you plan on attending any conferences or workshops this year?
I just attended the Metacomp (CFD++) Symposium in Pasadena, CA. I usually attend one of the AIAA conferences every other year. This year I was at the AIAA Aviation conference in Dallas.
What do you do when you’re not generating meshes?
When I’m not at Pointwise, my spare time is spread among three things. My family first and foremost. My wife and I spend a lot of time with our children, trying to get them excited about learning. Second is my hobby airfoil software called DesignFOIL. Lastly is my budding attempt at authoring a novel called Red Hope. Oh, and the Rubik’s Cube: I’ve been a speed cuber for about ten years with my average solve time running around 60 seconds. At one point, I was the 649th fastest cuber in the world.
What is some of the best CFD advice you’ve ever received?
Get Pointwise. And make sure double-precision graphics is enabled (Edit/Preferences/Graphics).
If you had to pick a place to have dinner, where would you go?
I have two little children, so my restaurant needs are simple. However, the best place for a 10th anniversary dinner is the Reatta Restaurant in downtown Fort Worth. For all other occasions, there is Subway.
Our friends at CD-adapco will probably love this polyhedron grid paper from Gridzzly.
Cloud & Mobile
CFD Engine jumps on the “Uber for X” bandwagon by asking whether we need an Uber for CFD. It’s an interesting contrast to cloud-based apps that suppose access to hardware and software is the bottleneck. An Uber for CFD supposes that expertise is the bottleneck. [The article uses the term “punter” but in a way that leads me to believe they’re not talking about the football kicker.]
Students can get free, cloud-based access to Altair HyperWorks by filling out a brief form to become an Altair University User.
simulationHub is a new cloud-based fluid flow simulation CFD app for designers.
One of my concerns about CAD/CFD/meshing on mobile (i.e. touch screen) devices is accuracy and precision. Siemens PLM Software’s Catchbook seems to have addressed some of those issues for sketching.
I recently posted here a link to the results of the Worldwide CAD Trends 2015 survey in which we see simulation way up in the “high importance, high usage” quadrant [huzzah] and other things including cloud-based CAD down in the “low importance, low usage” quadrant. But the Beyond PLM blog says that’s OK and goes on to introduce a wonderful variant of a Henry Ford quote [that I will shamelessly steal].
Can any of my aero friends shed some light (no pun intended) on the F-16 Scamp, shown here in a NASA wind tunnel in the early 90s? Image from io9. Click image for link.
Velocity contours of fan-driven flow around a plant tray in a vertical farm. Image from Design News. See link above.
A Faceted Halloween
I’m actually pleasantly surprised to have found for sharing here a piece of mesh-like fine art with a Halloween twist. [Please note: the Halloween tie-in is one of my own making and is not a value judgment or demeaning of the artwork.]
Artist Stephanie Calvert used materials found in her parents’ dilapidated, rural Colorado home to create works that helped her process her upbringing and her mother’s recent accident. Exploring themes of order and chaos, works in her Shame to Pride exhibition will open in NYC on 12 November.
You can see and hear Ms. Calvert’s story in a video she produced about Shame to Pride.
CD-adapco announced Wian van der Merwe of Aerotherm as the winner of their 2016 Calendar Competition for his visualization of the flowfield around a cyclist’s head. See image below.
DEVELOP3D is offering a Dell Precision 7510 to one lucky person who answers “a few quick questions.”
Winners of Mentor Graphics’ Don Miller Award include GE Oil and Gas. The award is given for applications of Flowmaster in thermo-fluid system design.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The winner of CD-adapco’s 2016 Calendar Competition. Image from CD-adapco. See link above.
Software
CEI released EnSight 10.1.6(a) including primarily bug fixes but also some new features.
Onshape asks six rhetorical questions that assess whether you’re ready for full-cloud [First reference to degrees of cloud I’ve run across. Partly cloudy?] CAD. “#2 Do I need an affordable alternative to desktop CAD’s many expenses?”
NUMECA’s FINE CFD suite is now available in the cloud via UberCloud’s application software containers.
Flow Science released FLOW-3D v11.1 with a plethora of new features including active simulation control. There will be a webinar on 19 November to explain it all.
EvoluteTools T.MAP beta, a mesh parametrization plugin for Rhino, is now available and includes the ability to make quad, tri, and texture-mapped, curvature aligned meshes (see image below).
CD-adapco released DARS v2.12 for chemistry-based combustion.
ParaView 5.0.0-RC1 is now available for you to download and use for your CFD visualizations. This new release several rendering improvement including an alpha implementation of a ray tracing package (see image below).
IronCAD introduced MPIC, an integrated multi-physics simulation package.
We’re going to be in Stuttgart next week hosting our first Let’s Talk Meshing Workshop at the University of Stuttgart. And you have a couple of hours left before registration closes.
The next issue of our The Connector newsletter is due to be published next week. Stay tuned.
Our friends at ANSYS continue to grow in terms of revenue as reported by Monica Schnitger. In Q3, the company’s software garnered $140 million (flat year/year) while service and maintenance brought in $98 million. For 2016 the company looks to be breaking through the $1 billion ceiling, a forecast growth of 9%.
A mesh from the EvoluteTools T.MAP beta plugin for Rhino. Image from Evolute. See link above.
Events
If you’re involved in powertrain simulation you might want to attend CD-adapco’s 1-day workshop on A Better Powertrain Simulation Process on 01 December in Novi, Michigan.
Artist Mark Francis’ paintings are motivated by revelatory images from modern science; both microscopic and astronomic. In other words, things the unaided human eye cannot see. In doing so, he creates visual landscapes that allow us to explore pattern and rhythm in a way that touches both on abstract painting’s history and science’s future.
[In perhaps one of the most unique applications of CFD I’ve run across,] researchers have used CFD to simulate how a 600 million year old organism fed.
What’s more interesting than the CFD is the fact that this organism has triradial symmetry.
Just a CFD shower curtain, one of the many CFD-themed gift items from Symscape. Click image for article.
ESI‘s software license income for Q3 was up 16%. The article doesn’t mention OpenFOAM by name but does mention their work with recently acquired Ciespace.
Our friends at Exa had a good Q3 with software license revenue up 9%.
On a related note, Exa has been cited as a “growth company.”
EnSight supports the Canon Mixed Reality display device.
Black Grid
Honestly, Wassily Kandinsky’s 1922 painting Black Grid only got on my radar because of its name. It’s almost like a riddle – what’s that regular grid doing in the midst of all that flowing chaos? Does it anchor the rest of the painting or float above it? I don’t know. Maybe you have some thoughts.
The abstract deadline for MeshTrends 11 (the symposium on Trends in Unstructured Mesh Generation held in conjunction with the World Congress on Computational Mechanics) has been extended to 30 December.
A mesh from Autodesk’s Project Harmony for Simulation Moldflow. Image from Autodesk. See link above.
Visions of Triangles Danced in Their Heads
When you do CFD or meshing long enough, a few nightmares about triangles are to be expected. But this 1966 animation of waltzing triangles is a fantastic dream come true. Enjoy Rene Jodoin’s Notes on a Triangle and be certain to checkout the article’s links to other videos.
Screen capture from Notes on a Triangle by Rene Jodoin from 1966. Image from Visual News. See article link above. Click image for video.
One of the minimalist geometric videos linked to by the article above is Chuck Jones’ Oscar-winning The Dot and The Line. I’m fortunate to own a cel of the original artwork from that film.
Image may be NSFW.
![Screen capture from a CD-adapco simulation of a Hawker Hurricane water landing. [Feeds my love of WWII-era aircraft.] Click image for video.](http://afinemesh.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/cd-adapco-hawker-ditching.png?w=300&h=180)
