By developing a novel vehicle thermal comfort model, Delphi Harrison Thermal Systems has been able to evaluate the performance of many more heating / ventilation / air conditioning (HVAC) system designs than was ever possible in the past. By using this model a more thorough investigation of the design parameters space brings the final design closer to optimum. Traditionally, HVAC design alternatives have been evaluated by testing prototypes in wind tunnels, a very time-consuming and expensive process. Though automotive OEMs and suppliers have developed many cabin climate prediction models over the last several years, Delphi’s new virtual thermal comfort engineering model goes considerably farther than it’s predecessors by integrating a 16-zone human physiology model that predicts human comfort by calculating skin temperatures. The model uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to predict local thermal comfort as a function of air temperature, surrounding surface temperatures, air velocity, humidity, direct solar flux, as well as the level of activity and clothing type of each individual. This technology is currently being used to design and optimize HVAC systems and in the future its use is to be extended for the development of control algorithms and the calibration of electronic controls.

The event was sponsored by some of the leading hardware vendors in the business. Hewlett-Packard was the gold sponsor, Silicon Graphics the silver sponsor, and Sun, IBM, and Compaq (now Hewlett Packard) served as bronze sponsors.

The CFD Pavilion, a highlight of the meeting, featured 22 partner booths, information on Fluent products and services, and posters by Fluent staff illustrating the latest in CFD technology.

On August 1st I visited CFX Engineering Software in Waterloo, Ontario Canada and was given previews of several upcoming software packages from this tier-1 CFD vendor.

The Waterloo office is home to CFX's software development teams for CFX-TASCflow, CFX-TurboGrid, CFX-Post and the largest portion of the CFX-5 team, in addition to a portion of the sales and support group for North America. There are approximately 60 employees in the office, half of whom are involved in software development.

My visit was hosted by Dr. Jeff Van Doormaal, product development manager for CFX-TurboGrid, CFX's grid generation software tool for turbomachinery applications.

Note: For your chance to ask CFX Engineering Software about CFD development, add your question to this discussion.

The new software, ideally suited to improve the design of fluid flow applications, such as intake manifolds and radiator or air compressor systems, also maximizes the efficiency of aircraft or automotive air-handling systems. It also uses advanced CAD modeling techniques to shorten the time required for product design and reduces the need for elaborate prototype testing, thus compressing the time required to bring new products to market.

North American CFD workshop: Aeroacoustics
September 20th, Novi, MI, USA

As part of a series of upcoming CFD workshops being offered by CD-adapco; on September 20th, at 9.00 am you are invited to a 3 hour session on Aeroacoustics.

Aeroacoustics is a discipline generating significant interest today. The understanding of aeroacoustics phenomena, aimed ultimately towards noise suppression is important for reasons such as comfort, safety, avoiding component failure and meeting noise regulations.
The work shop will demonstrate how CFD can be used to reliably predict noise levels and help understand how to minimize it using the state-of-the-art modeling techniques available today.

The Fluent RSF is specifically designed to handle highly parallel simulations, often characterized by large volumes of sensitive customer data, over the Internet. It is optimized for large-scale simulations and/or the concurrent execution of many simulations, such as those found in sensitivity analysis or optimization. The facility uses state-of-the-art security and systems infrastructure technology from providers including Cisco, Sun, SGI, and Hewlett Packard. This service is ideal for Fluent CFD users who require occasional "surge" capacity for time-critical simulations, or periodic simulations of large models.