Here's wishing you the best in 2002.

Highlights of the Technical Committees in the CFD field include:

Applied Aerodynamics

• CFD was used in the design of a micro air vehicle optimized using a genetic algorithm. The work was sponsored by DARPA.
• NASA Glenn, Lockheed Martin, and the US Airforce Research Lab used CFD to optimize ultracompact inlet diffuser ducts.
• NASA Langley computed N-S solutions on multi-block grids for an advanced diamond wing concept. The results showed excellent agreement with data from the National Transonic Facility wind tunnel.
• NASA Ames computed high resolution solutions of a UH-60A helicopter in hover using meshes with 10.6 and 64 million grid points. In addition to providing a wealth of detailed flow field information, the results show that rotorcraft CFD simulations can provide accurate quantitative performance results as well.
• NASA's PAB3D solver was used to compute aeroacoustic solutions for round and chevron nozzles.
• ARL used FLUENT 5 to compute viscous solutions on lattice finned missiles. The article states: "Mesh generation is the challenge for this class of problems, because it is difficult to resolve the boundary layer flow around the missile body and the individual fin surfaces while keeping the model size manageable."
• A drag prediction workshop was held during the summer.

Fluent's beta test program has ensured that each new capability has been tested on a real-world industrial problem. The extensive testing performed by Fluent and their beta testers reduces the amount of validation necessary for adopters of the new code.

A new Eulerian granular model is available in FLUENT 6.0. This capability is necessary to correctly predict the behavior of solids in multiphase flows. The formulation includes the solids pressure and can accurately describe transitions in the solids phase as the packing limit is reached. The Eulerian granular model is intended for applications such as fluidized beds, risers, solids suspension, and sedimentation.

Other enhancements include dynamic load balancing for parallel simulations, new spray models including both primary and secondary atomization, VRML output, and turbo-specific post-processing on unstructured grids.

The new software also debuts moving/deforming mesh for analysis of in-cylinder engine performance as a beta capability.

A system architecture that can achieve high parallel efficiency becomes important for large CFD simulations. The same multiprocessor architecture found in the largest shared memory parallel (SMP) system currently available, the SGI Origin 3800, is available in the more affordable SGI Origin 300 system.

The HPC technology offered with the new midrange SGI Origin 300 server is well-suited to the demands of each MCAE application segment. In particular, the choice offered with SGI Origin 300 as a moderately configured SSI for departmental deployment, or as a large cluster for scalable DMP applications, provides substantial performance benefits to MCAE applications for a range of modeling requirements.

The test configuration was a DLR-F4 model which had been tested in three European transonic facilities. Participants were provided with multiblock structured, overset, and unstructured grids on which to perform baseline cruise-point calculations.

Twenty participants provided solutions and 51 individuals attended the workshop from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Brazil. At the cruise point, the standard deviation of CFD solutions was 20 drag counts (0.0020), whereas the standard deviation in the wind tunnel data was approximately 5 drag counts. A similar workshop held in the 1990s used the same geometry and resulted in a standard deviation of approximately 50 drag counts.

With its complete offering of graphics capabilities, the HP workstation c3650 provides MCAD and CAE customers with the compute power they need to solve today's resource-hungry design tasks cost-effectively. It is ideal for visualizing designs, models, mechanical design, and solid-modeling work.