Mechanical Analysis Blog

Back in December I heard something on the radio that made me both sad and happy at the same time. It turns out that the last neon sign in Piccadilly Square in London was to be turned off by the end of the year. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing London at night, Piccadilly Sq is a sight to behold (for a picture click here ) The neon sign in question had been in use since 1987 and … Read More

FloEFD, CFD, Thermal Characterization, T3ster

It’s that time of the year, when the weather turns cold and people start to think about winterizing their home to reduce heating costs.  Usually it takes the first winter heating bill to provide the motivation to undertake this task.  With this in mind, I would like to talk about pipe insulation.  Specifically, the foam wrap insulation you can find at any hardware store (http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202318552/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053)   In … Read More

FloEFD, Heat Transfer, CFD, pipe, Home Improvement, insulation

Have you ever had one of those days where it would have been better to have stayed in bed with the duvet pulled up firmly above your head? I’m sure most of us have had those kinds of days. Last week I was suffering from this malaise. I curbed the front wheel of our new car on the way to work, I dropped my breakfast bagel after taking the first bite (and yes a dropped bagel exhibits the same behavior … Read More

FloEFD, CFD, FloVENT

For the past few months I’ve been talking about our user meetings – the Mechanical Analysis Division User2User meetings which are taking place all over the world. The venue was built at the site of an old castle. I just came back from the meeting in Germany and I can quite honestly say that it was one of the most energizing meetings I’ve attended in a long time. This was a meeting of “firsts”: the … Read More

Mechanical U2U, FloEFD, T3ster

Welcome to Part V of a multi-part series, where in this installment Travis takes a look at his lawn mower. One of my first jobs as a new home owner was to mow the lawn.  As it happens, we had a friend with a lawn mower that was no longer using it, so he gave it to us.  When I went to pick it up, he was using words like, 1992, and “never maintained”, so I knew it wasn’t going to be a super awesome lawn … Read More

FloEFD, lawn mower, CFD

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

As a FloTHERM, FloVENT or FloEFD user you might not realise it but you are part of a global and growing user community. This year we are hosting 3 ‘U2U’ (user to user) meetings in Germany, France and the UK. This is a golden opportunity for you to meet other users, hear about our exciting new products, see fascinating keynote and user presentations, learn advanced software tips and tricks, … Read More

U2U, FloEFD, user meeting, FloVENT

I travel a fair bit. Sometimes it’s a short hop across the channel to the Continent and sometimes it’s a long haul flight to the States. Regardless of whether the flight is one hour, 3 hours or 15 hours, you mentally need to prepare yourself for several things: sitting next to someone with a cold/cough, sitting behind someone who will immediately recline their seat and reduce your usable leg space … Read More

FloVENT, FloEFD, Visualization

Hello everybody, I know it’s about time again, I was a little busy with LEDs lately, had some very interesting visits of customers working with LEDs and was working a webinar for use of LEDs in Automotive. You canegister now for this Automotive LED webinar. But this time it is not about Automotive but about LEDs, I just happened to read an article about Applebee’s plan to switch to LED … Read More

Energy Saving, FloEFD, Consumer LED, going green, LED

Hi everyone, I’ve been a bit silent for the past couple of months but there’s a good reason for it. I’ve been working behind the scenes organizing a few events. And now I’m very pleased to announce our upcoming Mechanical U2Us — a series of Mechanical Analysis Division specific User 2 User meetings which will be held around the world. If you are unfamiliar with the Mechanical … Read More

FloVENT, FloEFD, Mechanical U2U

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

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

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

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent. I am preparing for Christmas. Since my childhood I have been really fond of Christmas-trees and candles on the tree. But my father has always been afraid of fire, therefore candles were lit only when my parents were present. It changed  with the strings of  bulbs. They introduced a new game: when decorating the tree, one had to test the string since the low voltage … Read More

LED reliability, FloEFD, T3ster, LED testing, LM80 tests