The only fluid dynamics program that is fully embedded within the SolidWorks user environment, COSMOS/FloWorks provides design engineers with a fundamental analysis of the flow of gases and liquids, heat transfer, and other forces on immersed or surrounding solids. The same qualities that make SolidWorks the industry's leading mid-range CAD system for the design of engines, valves, hydraulics, piping, pumps, HVAC, and other complicated assemblies make COSMOS/FloWorks the perfect tool for analyzing them.

COSMOS/FloWorks ignores the traditional practice of handing off fluid analysis to specialists by translating problems into engineering analysis goals rather than numerical convergence criteria and solver parameters. Leaving the SolidWorks geometry as a solid model, COSMOS/FloWorks empowers engineers who are not analysis experts to succeed in today's design environment.

FINE/Design3D includes Autoblade and Design3D.

Autoblade is a versatile parametric blade modeler for accurate representation of all types of turbomachinery blades and channels. Geometry definition is generic (Pressure/Suction side or Camberline/Thickness) and highly flexible (independent control of the tangential and meridional lean and sweep, multiple choices for the 3D blade stacking, multiple splitters, rounded or cut-off leading and trailing edges with tailored shapes…).

Design3D is a powerful and integrated optimisation process for turbomachinery applications. Through a comprehensive interface, customised to the turbomachinery design industry, an optimisation loop is performed that includes:

• A self-learning database that stores the parameters of the optimisation runs;
• An optimization step with gradient, simulated annealing and genetic algorithm methods.

Optimisation targets can be linked to local and global features of the flow field, while geometrical constraints can limit the solution domain.

CFdesign makes it possible for 3D product designs built in SolidWorks to be evaluated and optimized without any type of translation or conversion process. Changes made to geometry within SolidWorks are automatically reflected in CFdesign, eliminating the time-consuming and confusing process of creating and managing multiple geometry models during a project lifecycle. With CFdesign there is always only one model, and it is updated and managed within the SolidWorks environment.

“We believe the global SolidWorks user community is starting to come of age where design analysis is concerned. The value proposition is just too great to ignore,” stated Blue Ridge Numerics President, Ed Williams. “We consistently see our customers increase product quality and strip away costs while bringing products to market faster than ever before when CFdesign is used hand-in-glove with an MCAD system on the mechanical engineer’s desktop PC.”

When SolidWorks users launch CFdesign directly within the SolidWorks interface, the component or assembly will automatically appear inside CFdesign where comprehensive fluid flow and heat transfer simulations can reveal product performance concerns and identify areas for product optimization.

The workshops for May are:

Multiphase Flows Workshop, 13th May 2002, Oslo, Norway
Chemical Workshop, 16th May 2002, Paris, France
Powertrain Applications Workshop, 17th May 2002, Gothenburg, Sweden
Chemical Process Workshop, 21st May 2002, Manchester, UK
Marine Workshop, 24th May 2002, Hamburg, Germany
Multiphase Flows Workshop, 31st May 2002, Helsinki, Finland

Interested parties should visit www.cd-adapco.com.

Computer simulation saved more than $100,000 dollars in the design of a new coal preheating technology for low NOx burners by making it possible to get the design right the first time. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a NOx reduction process under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy to provide a cost effective, combustion-based alternative to selective catalytic reduction (SCR). Development targets include NOx reduction to below 0.15 pounds per million Btu, reduced CO2 emissions, and a 55% electricity cost reduction compared to SCR. The technology combines GTI’s Methane de-NOX reburn technology with a pulverized coal (PC) preheating approach developed for utility pulverized coal combustors by the All-Russian Thermal Engineering Institute (VTI). Many variations of the initial burner design were evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), making it possible for engineers to determine an optimized design concept. As a result, the initial prototype met the design objectives, eliminating the need to build and test additional prototypes at a cost that would have probably run into six figures each.

Fluent Inc. has announced the release of IcePro 3.0, its Pro/Engineer®-to-Icepak interface. The interface builds on its successful integration of CAD software with the thermal modeling software Icepak.

This release is an advance in the CAD integration paradigm introduced in the previous versions of the interface. By allowing the user to use simplification tools available in Pro/Engineer itself, the time required to get thermal models from CAD systems is reduced dramatically. The philosophy of the integrated Pro/Engineer CAD interface is to take advantage of design engineers' expertise in using Pro/Engineer to define the thermal model,
-- Icepak Product Manager, Dr. Rajesh Nair.

The IcePro user can take advantage of many of Pro/Engineer's CAD and database features, such as single instance exporting of repetitive features. The interface allows the user to load an assembly, and export specific parts or sub-assemblies to Icepak. The export mechanism also allows the user to capture non-geometric information.

IcePro 3.0 is now available from Fluent Inc for Windows NT/Windows 2000 platforms only, for Icepak users worldwide for an annual license fee of $2,500. The product will be made available on UNIX platforms at a later date. Visit the Icepak web site and the Fluent web site for a listing of worldwide offices and distributors.