Mechanical Analysis Blog

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

During a recent phone call with one of my favorite reporters, we talked about the difference between easy-to-use and dumbed-down software. We went on to talk about why easy to use CFD software doesn’t’ mean that it has been dumbed down — after all, easy to use software can still be very powerful. But ease-of-use has gotten a bad rap out there. Some people assume that because a software tool is easy … Read More

Design Engineer, Heat Transfer, CFD

I read in the news this last week that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a Brit and the inventor of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually “unnecessary”… and it seems that polar ice will be gone in the summer, perhaps by as early as 2020, opening the arctic ocean to shipping. At the same time I’m writing this on my laptop, the fan’s just cut in. Hmmm… The Berners-Lee story … Read More

Optimisation, Heat Transfer, Power Consumption, CFD, Electronics Cooling, Carbon Footprint, World Wide Web, Global Warming, Green Design, Energy Efficiency, FloEFD

I recently read an excellent white paper from Cyon Research titled “Classes of MCAE Software: Clarifying the Market”.   It spoke about the requirement in the industry and the characteristics for CFD software packages that were targeted for use by the CFD specialist.  It also emphasized that the emerging need was for CFD software that could be used by the design engineer who was not a CFD specialist. … Read More

EFD, CAE, Computational Fluid Dynamics, FloEFD, CFD, MCAD, Mechanical Analysis, Fluid Flow, Heat Transfer

We are all familiar with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).  Some of YOU are experts in this science/art and use it on a daily basis to solve some of your most complex fluid flow and heat transfer problems.  Some of US can hardly spell CFD and as engineers design their products they depend heavily on the CFD specialists to perform the simulations that determine if what they are designing will work … Read More

Mechanical Design, Mechanical Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics, FloEFD, CFD, MCAD, MCAE, Fluid Flow, Heat Transfer