I was reading an article in City A.M a while back – a freebie newspaper containing banking and business news and distributed to those lucky souls in London who take public transport. On this wet and cold morning no one was interested in taking a copy so as I walked by the guy handing them out, I stuck out my hand. I wasn’t expecting much but it was better than staring into nothingness (as you do on … Read More
When was the last time someone asked for your opinion at work? I don’t mean “where should we go for lunch” type of question. I mean the type where someone really wants to know what you think about something. Being a talkative and opinionated sort, whenever someone asks me a question I’m perfectly happy answering them. Most of the time when this question is posed to me it’s about projects but sometimes … Read More
I put the title in quotes as it’s the title of a blog post by John Chawner at Pointwise who keeps a pleasantly vendor neutral(ish) blog about all things CFD called ‘Another Fine Mesh’, including the excellent weekly ‘This Week in CFD’ that is becoming a bit of a mecca for the CFD community. John’s blog focusses on a white paper Mentor issued recently about How to … Read More
Saturday lulled me into a false sense of security. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and for once in a long time I wasn’t out hiking. I thought that’s fine… there’s always tomorrow. Then bam on Sunday the rain came … the monsoon kind of rain. It reminded me of a quick conversation I had with a German friend of mine over the summer. He quipped that if rain were an Olympic event, GB would win Gold, … Read More
I live in a 3D world –3D simulation that is. I remember when my work life went from 2D to 3D. I used to sit in a cubicle across from a software developer who specialized in graphics. He was a pesky lad. Whenever he’d get stuck on a particularly difficult piece of code he would throw missiles of all kinds at me – anything from crumpled pieces of paper to rubber bands and paper clips. I don’t know why … Read More
Effective use of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation tool requires at least a working knowledge of fluid dynamics itself. Tools alone don’t make for a good engineer. When interviewing for jobs within the Mechanical Analysis Division (and way back into Flomerics days too) a common question posed to tease out such an understanding is to describe the air flow patterns in and around a … Read More
I don’t know about you but last Saturday night I decided to stay in – I was only halfway done with my weekend but I was exhausted. The day before I had taken a vacation day and driven down to Weymouth to watch Olympic sailing and got up super early to drive back to London to do an 8-mile hike in Surrey. So the thought of going anywhere or doing anything too taxing was out of the question (especially … Read More
When I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I knew I needed to analyze something related to the Olympics during this special time of year. At first I thought I would analyze the Olympic Rings. Not a real scientific CFD analysis, but just something cool and easy to do, by hollowing out some Olympic CAD rings and putting some flow through. Well, using FloEFD to do this analysis was easy, … Read More
Shuttlecock, Olympics, Badminton, Birdie, aerodynamics, Creo, FloEFD, CFD, Compuational Fluid Dynamics
One thing the Mechanical Analysis Division is not guilty of is vendor hubris. Despite the passion we have about our CFD based simulation solutions we know our place, especially in terms of where best to apply our solutions throughout the design process. CFD is a very powerful tool to predict 3D heat air flow and heat transfer but it certainly isn’t the only approach. As is common in both electronics … Read More
FloVENT, HVAC, Electronics Cooling, thermal comfort, U-Value
Hi. You may have been wondering why I’ve been so quiet lately. Quite frankly I’ve been busy. Busy at work and busy during my downtime (which is when I do most of my thinking and writing for this blog). This has been a tremendous summer for those of us who are in London. First we celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Then came the Olympics.
Yes I stood in the cold and monsoon rain for … Read More
Conventional wisdom has it that the best place to put a radiator in a room is under the window. However, there’s nothing conventional about wisdom and one should be obliged to question and verify those facts that we take for granted. CFD and its ability to predict air flow and heat transfer offers an unrivalled efficient method to study such applications. Using the concept of PPD (percentage people … Read More
I know I promised that the next blog would be a BBQ CFD analysis, but I came across this model and it was too interesting to pass up. A number of years ago, I was flipping through the channel guide and saw a show about choppers. At first, I thought I read copters, and being an aerospace engineer, watching a show on helicopters was something I was interested in. Of course the show was about … Read More
Sometime between 40 and 100 thousand years ago humans started to wear clothes, an estimate as accurate as you’d expect for something that wasn’t documented at the time. Earliest estimate of humans documenting language are a mere 5000 years ago. One can only assume that it wasn’t modesty or fashion that drove the adoption of clothing, but comfort. Much of what we still do today, frequently … Read More
thermal comfort, Fanger, FloVENT, CFD, PPD, radiator, HVAC, PMV
Automotive systems are increasingly complex and time-to-market deadlines are increasingly tight. Design engineers face relentless pressure to develop consistently reliable products quickly, so it’s not surprising that virtual prototyping is popular. The technology supports the “What if?” thinking that leads to innovation. It’s the way Thomas Edison worked, but much faster, and faster still when … Read More
CIMdata, FloEFD, 1D and 3D models, Thomas Edison, Flomaster, Mentor Graphics
With the gulf stream having shifted south and now flowing happily somewhere high over Paris, the summer weather in the UK has been ‘unseasonably’ (literally) wet and miserable. People’s heating has been thermostatically popping back on all over the country which for July is unheard of. So with this as the background and in the context of a stagnating world economy, ever continuing … Read More