Mentor Blogs

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

The recently released FloEFD HVAC Module brings a raft of features specifically tailored to enable FloEFD to be used for built environment simulations. FloEFD  has an unrivalled pedigree in the automating of advance CFD (computational fluid dynamics) techniques and capabilities, allowing the user to focus on application and not numerics. This democratisation of CFD brings the ability to simulate the … Read More

FloEFD HVAC Module, FloVENT, FloEFD, HVAC

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

On a recent trip to Japan I was surprised to find out how much their attitudes to smoking had changed. Cigarette prices have increased by over 30% in the last year and many public places now have smoking bans in force. For a country that has been renowned for its voracious attitude to smoking such a change in such a conservative culture is a bit of a shock. But as they say nowadays, “smoking is … Read More

contaminant distribution, FloVENT, CFD, HVAC, smoking

No one really knows where the term “mind your P’s and Q’s” came from or what it really means. I always thought it had something to do with being polite and saying thank you. But in a recent article by Erich Buergel, our division General Manager, he talked about the 3 P’s of the business world and why we should mind them in our quest for greater productivity. They are (in no particular order) People, … Read More

Design Engineer, FloEFD, CFD, FloVENT

The internet is big. It’s not sentient yet, though Robert Swayer has written a compelling story of how it might ‘Wake‘. In fact it’s far from intelligent at all. Banal comments about “how we ever managed without it” will age so quickly that future historians will assume a typo, more intelligence than we currently have and take the phrase to have been “how did we ever manage with it”. It looks like … Read More

data center cooling, data centre, Data Center, FloVENT, HVAC, data centre cooling, Electronics Cooling

If you’re involved in CFD in education in any way this will be of interest to you. Since shortly after Flomerics were acquired by Mentor Graphics we’ve been working towards getting out products into Mentor’s Higher Education Program (HEP), and we’ve finally got it done. To my knowledge, the availability of potentially millions of dollars worth of commercial CFD software, plus support and training, … Read More

Mentor HEP, Higher Education, Thermal Design, Concurrent CFD, Education, CFD, Thermal Management, FloVENT, Upfront CFD, Electronics Cooling, FloEFD

Considering that CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) is an advanced mathematical method for predicting fluid flow and heat transfer using a computational software approach I find it paradoxical that it is often as much an art as it is a science. A model by its very definition is a representation of something. A computer model is a virtual representation of a system (e.g. a laptop, a rack mounted server, … Read More

science, CFD, art, Modeling, modelling, FloVENT, Model

I’ve been remiss in not posting for a couple of weeks, so I’m trying to get back in the saddle. I’ve been working on other things that have taken up a fair bit of time. One is a web seminar on heatsinks – Heatsink 201 – Even More about Heat Sinks which follows on from Alexandra Francois-Saint-Cyr’s very successful Heat Sink 101 web seminar. Back in March I posted about IBM’s work on liquid cooling … Read More

FloVENT, Google, ASHRAE, Building HVAC, Air Cooling, Green building design, Data Center, Liquid Cooling, Electronics Cooling, CFD, Thermal Management, Cost Saving

Larry Grayson’s famous high camp catchphrase would be well heeded by those wanting to ensure good thermal insulation. You can make it difficult for heat to leave a room, thus maintain a warm room temperature, by constructing walls and floors of sandwiched layers of various materials, restricting heat transfer to conduction and (in cavities) radiation methods only. Open a door however and cold air will … Read More

FloVENT, HVAC, CFD, Thermal Insulation, U-Value

Conduction, the transfer of heat through a solid object. Convection, the transfer of heat in moving air/fluid. Radiation, the transfer of heat from one solid surface to cooler solid surface in ‘line of sight’. The 3 modes of heat transfer are your enemy when it comes to thermal insulation of built environments. Heat is as sly as a fox when it comes to squirming its way out of a space to the cool outside. … Read More

HVAC, Thermal Insulation, FloVENT, U-Value, Watts

Why is it that when you increase a cavity air gap size beyond ~30mm is there no subsequent detrimental affect on the overall U-Value? Why is it that the U-Value of the cavity gap nearly doubles when the air gap reduces to such as size so as to stagnate the air? Questions that come begging after observing the FloVENT simulation results discussed in the previous blog posting. Let’s find out…. When I … Read More

Conduction, Convection, CFD, U-Value, FloVENT, HVAC

100mm block, 50mm insulation, 50mm cavity air gap then 100mm block make up an external wall that in theory comply with a building regulation overall wall U-Value of 0.3 (W/m^2K). This got me thinking about the 50mm air gap. Why 50mm? What if it was 75mm or 10mm? Stagnant air is a great insulator, a small gap would tend to stagnate the air and might improve, reduce, the overall U-Value. A large gap would … Read More

CFD, FloVENT, Cavity Wall, HVAC, U-Value

As covered in the previous blog, air that sticks to the inside and outside walls offers a resistance to the heat that passes from the room to the inside of the wall and from the outside of the wall to the outside air. These two resistances make up part of the overall U-value, the overall ease by which heat can pass through the entire wall (or window or door etc.). The rest of the U-value is made up … Read More

FloVENT, HVAC, Boundry

It might well be that a single U-value is quoted, in reality though that single value describes the ease by which heat can pass through various stages, from an ‘inside’, passing through a ‘wall/window’ and going to the ‘outside’. The resistance (inverse of the ease, resistance = 1/ease) the heat experiences as it passes from the inside air to the inner solid surface of the wall construction (and from … Read More

FloVENT, HVAC, Boundry Layer, Thermal Insulation, U-Value