Operating primarily in the utilisation, conversion and transport of energy, the partnership will pool the expertise of both companies to provide leading edge solutions for industry, OEM’s, engineering consultants and transmission and distribution companies.

Gasunie Research has developed wide-ranging expertise in research and physical experimentation through 40 years of work on energy-related problems. It has made an essential contribution to the development of the Gas Market in the Netherlands. Innovation forms the basis for the consultancy practice of this company by offering integrated solutions to complex problems related to energy processes, gas quality and diversity, combustion and flow phenomena.

Fluent is the world’s largest provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and services, and is established in 22 industries in total. Its FLUENT CFD software package allows the virtual modelling and visualization of gas and liquid flows, heat and mass transfer and chemical reactions, providing the ability to rapidly trouble-shoot and optimise energy-related processes.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired expert in the tidal currents of Puget Sound, has studied the Tacoma Narrows. "The Narrows is a spectacular place," Ebbesmeyer said. "If you had eyes to see through water, it would be probably the most spectacular thing you could imagine in the Pacific Northwest."

At maximum tidal exchange, the amount of water that flows through the mile-wide passage is the equivalent of several Amazon Rivers.

Harsh conditions in the Narrows have required the development of innovative equipment and construction techniques, and have inspired an almost fanatical commitment to safety at Tacoma Narrows Constructors, the company building the bridge.

This is the second year that the Ford flag has been flown in the race by its graduate recruits, so this year's team of 15 engineers has both recently qualified graduates and five of last year's team members to act as supervisors and pass on their experience.

This year's vehicle uses advanced materials like carbon fibre and a composite bonded frame, so there is virtually no metal in the body at all. The body shape has been developed using computational fluid dynamics and it is no surprise that the final shape is reminiscent of smaller historical race cars.

The team is based at Ford's technical centre in Dunton, Essex. The team members, all volunteers working out of hours, gain valuable experience and access to a wide range of facilities and resources as they learn about the site's activities and broaden their own engineering and design skills.

“The new CAD/CAE associativity and flow through porous media capabilities for fluid flow analysis improve the ease with which fluid scenarios can be modeled and expand the range of scenarios that designers and engineers can consider,” said ALGOR product manager, Bob Williams. “These improvements demonstrate our commitment to expanding the fluid flow modeling and analysis options within the ALGOR family of products.”

Flow Science, Inc. is a privately held software company specializing in high fidelity fluid dynamics modeling software for industrial and scientific applications worldwide. In addition to this new regional United States marketing effort, Flow Science has a worldwide network of Associates for FLOW-3D®, including Japan, Germany, Korea, Finland, Norway, Russia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy, Canada and Southeast Asia. Flow Science is located in Santa Fe, NM.

Material Design Solutions is a privately held company based in Oak Hills, California.

For information, contact Ms. Rena Coby-Madrid at (505) 982-0088 or rena@flow3d.com or Mr. Dale Conner at (760) 956-6900 or info@materialdesignsolutions.com.

• Improved Geometry Cleanup Tools
• Automated Meshing with HexCore Technology
• Improved CAD Integration

GAMBIT 2.1 has a semi-automatic cleanup tool for repairing and preparing a CFD geometry for high quality meshing. Holes, overlapping faces, small features, sharp corners, etc. are quickly identified and various tools are directly accessible in the code to resolve this range of problems.