One of the oldest and finest establishments of its kind in India, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has grown into a premier center of research and advanced instruction. Its Combustion Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory works mostly on fundamental research in combustion and its applications in industry.

A recent research project focused on investigating the effects of flow recirculation on the efficiency of a gas furnace, the goal being to optimize the position of the fuel nozzles. CFD simulations were conducted in parallel with experimental work on a typical preheated-air furnace.

The user interface has also been significantly enhanced to further improve useability.

Add the rapid performance-screening "Plus" module, CFX-BladeGenPlus, and harness the power to readily obtain 3D viscous solutions with a level of effort equivalent to streamline curvature approaches.

CFD has become an important design tool in nearly every industrial field because it provides values for fluid velocity, fluid temperature, fluid pressure and species concentrations throughout a flow domain. But CFD analysis to date has been limited by post-processors that provide results relative to a fixed user position that discourage discovery. Virtual Vantage software harnesses the power of virtual reality to convert the flow domain into a computer-generated world that the user can immerse himself or herself within in order to bring their fullest potential of human thought and skill to bear on the problem.

Engine cooling simulation has been done for several years with 1D tools being used to determine pressure losses and flow rates in cooling circuits. The more complex flow patterns in cylinder head and jacket are simulated with full 3D CFD to determine convective heat transfer coefficients.

BMW simulates the vehicle's coolant flow with FLOWMASTER2, which enables a one-dimensional description of the whole system. Flow in the engine coolant jacket, which is much less predictable, is described three-dimensionally by the CFD programme STAR-CD, from CD-adapco.

Highlights include:

• Improvements to the integration routines
• A mass option for particle path calculations
• Flow feature extraction
• New CFD functions
• Shadowgraphs and Schlieren plots

The new Feature Extraction dialog adds the capabilities of MIT's FX (Fluid Feature eXtraction) library. The FX library calculates and displays any of several features of 3-D flow solutions. It takes grid and boundary information, plus velocity and several scalar flow solution variables as input. It calculates a shock function to generate shock surfaces (iso-surfaces where the shock function equals unity), vortex cores, and separation/attachment lines.

The FIRE GL X1, scheduled to be available in October 2002, is the first in the world to deliver a fully programmable floating point architecture in OpenGL® 2.0 and Microsoft® DirectX® 9, with double the performance of any product currently on the market.

Features:

• eight 128-bit parallel rendering pipelines
• 256B DDR RAM
• AGP 8X
• SMARTSHADER™ with support for up to 16 textures per rendering pass with pixel shaders
• dual monitor support
• stereo graphics support

"The FIRE GL X1 represents a significant breakthrough in the workstation market," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, Marketing and General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. "Its revolutionary architecture and raw power will be the only choice for artists, developers and engineers who want to create and refine digital content at unprecedented levels of versatility and speed."