hello! i'm a student doing this project on various application areas of CFD. i need some help concerning feedback from current users and professionals of CFD. is anyone willing to give me information on their work, their prognoses on further CFD areas, their suggestions concerning improvements or their ideas?

I'll mention names in my dissertation! thnx, shanay

Hi

It is not very clear that what kind of projects you are doing. If you specify the areas you are interested to know and discuss about, then please write again. It is difficult if you just say on CFD!!

Manosh

hey! thanks for replying in the first place.. well, i only said CFD, because i am just trying to find ANY application area, which is not specified. i am in a group working with AVL, a CFD software supplier, who wants to expand the usages of the software to more than just automotive simulations, which is what they have been focusing on. the point is that if you know how to, you can use CFD to simulate about anything, and i would like to know what people use it for. it can be in the area of production, or in some certain processes, or r&d...or even something that doesnt exist yet! since i am not a user and i dont really have that much technical knowledge, i though someone in here could maybe help me.. thanx, shanay

well, I can just tell you my application area. Presently it is in GAS TURBINE CORBUSTOR. Not using any commercial CFD pakages.

Manosh

hey manosh! could you tell me some details of your work, some description (4 idiots such as i , namely what steps it consists of, the purpose, and where you can use gas turbines..i'd be extremely interested!

thnx shanay

There are a number of application areas where CFD is regarded as "hot" today - two examples are biomedical applications and electronics cooling.

However, I think that in the last years and also in the following years the really "hot" CFD areas will be in very traditional engineering disciplines where CFD has not been used much before due to too high costs (cost of entry, critical mass, competence, ...)

The CFD application area where CFD use has grown most quickly over the last years is automotive (external aerodynamics, engine-simulations, ventilation, under-hood, cooling, noise, ...).

Automotive doesn't sound that cool and innovative (the same problems have been worked on for more than 100 years) but it is a traditional engineering discipline where CFD has become a great tool for the design engineer.

The reason this wide-spread use of CFD is happening in the automotive industry first is that these companies most often already have CFD competence and they also have many classical enginnering problems and hence can easily apply their CFD competence also to new areas where CFD has not been that critical before. The automotive sector is also very competitive so any tool that might give you an edge over a competitor will quickly be adopted.

I think that in the future you will see many examples of similar developments in other traditional engineering disciplines - CFD for classical engineering problems like ventilation, civil engineering, casting, process engineering, pumps, fans, blowers, drills, household appliancies, cooling problems, ...

For your reference, here is a fairly complete list of CFD application areas:

• <LI>Aerospace <LI>Architecture and Wind-Loading <LI>Astrophysics <LI>Automotive <LI>Biomedical <LI>Casting, Molding and Metal Processing <LI>Coating, Painting and Printing <LI>Electronics Cooling <LI>Environmental <LI>Fire and Safety <LI>Fuel Cells <LI>Geophysical <LI>HVAC&R <LI>Hydraulics <LI>Maritime and Ship Hydrodynamics <LI>Micro Electro Mechanical Systems <LI>Mineral Processing <LI>Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics <LI>Oil, Gas & Petrochemical <LI>Piping <LI>Plasma Physics <LI>Power Generation <LI>Process Industry <LI>Pumps and Fans <LI>River and Coastal Engineering <LI>Semiconductor Processing <LI>Turbomachinery <LI>Virtual Reality and Entertainment

Is there any references to the use of CFD in the defence industry other that fighter aircraft aerodynamics. I'm talking about balistics and so forth? Would be interesing to know but probably classified and top secret!

Hi Jonas, Your last application area for cfd has stumped me. Virtual Reality and Entertainment?!

CFD for computer games such as flight simulators, I would imagine.

It's also used for visual effects. If you see a digital ocean with waves in a computer animation, then CFD was definitely used in the process (for example the shallow water equations are known to produce nice visual effects at low cost).

CFD for producing pictures and movies - obvious applications are of course animations in Holywood movies (explosions, oceans, floods, ....). However, CFD is also used in less obvious virtual reality applications - I have a friend who develops CFD for blood-flow visualizations in computer based surgical simulators to make it possible for surgeons to practise surgical operation before they try it on a human. Having blood that looks and behaves realisticly in these simulations is of course important. It is quite fun - accuracy is less important, stability and convergence is critical (halting the operation to wait for the blood-flow CFD simulation to converge isn't an option...)

dear Jonas

thank you so much for your post, it sure helped me a lot. i'm still curious to know..what process engineering do you mean? which processes do you actually have in mind?

thnx shanay

Dear shanay,

I have a lot of material on the topic of your interest. I would be happy to provide it to you. Please, let me know how can I get in touch with you.

Best regards.