Mentor Blogs

I don’t particularly care for airports. You rush to get to them. You rush thru check-in and push your way thru never-ending queues to go thru security and get the prerequisite pre-boarding massage (I seem to get pat downs as I go thru security a lot and even though I gladly submit to them I’m starting to think that they are a new service that the airlines provide and thus deserve a proper marketing … Read More

CFD, electromagnetic, Avionics, ROI, FloEFD, interference

Welcome to Part IV of a multi-part series, where in this installment Travis continues the “virtual” look at his crawlspace. In the previous installment of “this old CFD house”, we started to peel back the veil on my crawlspace and its moisture issue.  I analyzed the problem as it is, and we made some enlightening findings.  First, really the only way air is getting into the crawlspace is … Read More

Computational Fluid Dynamics, crawlspace, CFD, HVAC, FloVENT, humidity

Welcome to Part III of a multi-part series, where in this installment Travis takes a “virtual” look at his crawlspace. For this next installment of “this old CFD house”, and really the entire reason I started this blog series, I’d like to take a look in my crawlspace. Now, from what I understand, Feng Shui says running water is good for wealth. Well the opposite is true when you have … Read More

Computational Fluid Dynamics, crawlspace, CFD, HVAC, FloVENT, humidity

What a wonderful expression this is … putting feathers in our caps. I looked up the origins of this phrase and found that in the days gone by people used to put a new feather in the headgear of warriors for every enemy they defeated in battle. And the more feathers in the headdress, the more victories and the better the warrior. Our CFD battlefield is symbolic in nature but it exists nonetheless. And … Read More

Shortcut field, Bottleneck field, CFD, Award, EDN Hot 100, Electronics Cooling, Design Engineer, Design News Golden Mousetrap

Welcome to Part II of a multi-part series where, in this installment, Travis takes a look at a typical chimney. For this next installment of “this old CFD house”, I’d like to investigate another gremlin that was discovered during the inspection period of the house we are purchasing. This one related to the chimney. The current damper is rusted and hard to operate. According to the chimney expert we … Read More

Chimney, Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, HVAC, efficiency, FloVENT

As you may have already heard, our division works with Bromley Technologies – the team of engineering experts behind Olympic athletes Shelley Rudman and Kristan Bromley. They have together won the most medals for Great Britain this past season.  Last year when I first saw footage of Kristan racing, I was in awe. The speed, the motion, the action … it all requires nerves of steel.  If you’d like to watch/listen … Read More

CFD, aerodynamics

I’ve been on the road a lot lately. Aside from attending company meetings, I’ve been out meeting our customers. This is perhaps the most enjoyable part of my job – meeting engineers who’ve been using our products to solve real-life problems. In this day and age of tight budgets, we all have learned to do a lot remotely – we send email, speak on the phone, videoconference and watch demos via webex etc. … Read More

Design Engineer, FloEFD, CFD

The CAD/CAM/CAE market has been fairly stable over the past few years – we get a merger to two every few years. But over the past couple of months we’ve seen a couple of acquisitions. While one acquisition in a quiet market is interesting, two may be the beginnings of a trend. So I thought we could look at the recent developments from the perspective of you – the end-user of technology — and how … Read More

CFD, CFdesign, Acusim, FloVENT, FloEFD

When I saw that Robin had written a blog about a beer fridge I thought he had beaten me to the punch. In my spare time I too have been using our CFD tools to analyze a beer fridge. The differences are I am using FloVENT  and my fridge is a self-service refrigerated showcase.  The story of the showcase is not complete but I want to provide the first installment. The idea of the open (self-service) refrigerated … Read More

Refrigerated Display, CFD, Refrigerator, FloVENT

I’d like to introduce my first guest blogger, Travis Mikjaniec. Travis is a colleague of mine who is entering the world of home ownership. Travis has questioned some of the recommendations from the various home inspectors. In a multi-part series Travis will debunk or otherwise quantify the value of the recommendations. Starting the process of buying a house is a daunting task.  Beyond all the … Read More

Computational Fluid Dynamics, Duct Flow, CFD, FloVENT, HVAC

Hi again, I recently came across an interesting HVAC application of FloEFD, our CAD-embedded CFD package for concurrent product design, from one of our users in the Netherlands, Royal Boon Edam. I think it just shows how ubiquitous CFD has become in the world today when a manufacturer that was founded in 1873 as a carpentry workshop and has now grown into an international leader in the design and development … Read More

CFD, FloEFD, Bob Dylan, Revolving Doors, Royal Boon Edam, HEC (Holland Engineerings Consultants BV), HVAC

I hope you have all had a fantastic holiday and that you’ve come back to work safe and sound. What's wrong with this analysis? Image and animation courtesy of Mentor Graphics. I thought it might be fun to do something a bit different with my first post of the year – afterall today is supposed to be the gloomiest day of the year Anyway, one of my colleagues recently created a little CFD animation … Read More

CFD

I don’t know about you but as another year draws to a close, I can’t help but take a look at the past year and review my to do list. I noticed that while I was able to complete a lot of projects, I still didn’t have enough time to do everything that I wanted to do. You see, I’ve  become a bit of a perfectionist. I wasn’t always like this but I’ve found that being around engineers pretty much 24/7 some … Read More

Engineer, faucet, CFD, pressure loss, kitchen tap, mixing

I’ve got the WIFI blues. Our American skiing buddies (whom we haven’t seen for three years) are making the great trek across the Atlantic ocean for a ski vacation in France. Among the usual list of requirements (good snow and nice range of terrains and activities) was “must have WIFI”. They were happy to compromise on transfer time, travel by car/air/sea/train and even schlep bags on public transport. … Read More

WiFi, CFD, electroincs, antenna, Solar, Thermal Management, ROI

It seems that my previous post resonated deeply with everyone – I received a lot of offline comments and my post inspired two of my colleagues (Boris and Andras) to do their own blog posts. This doesn’t shock me because Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest travel periods in the States so everyone is thinking about flying. So I thought we should stay with the subject for one more day and look at it … Read More

T3ster, Thermal, FloEFD, CFD, LED, QA, FloVENT, hybrid engine