Bellevue, WA - June 24, 2002 - Amtec Engineering, Inc., developer of Tecplot data visualization software, today announced the release of CFD Analyzer 3.0, a Tecplot add-on with extensive capabilities for post-processing computational fluid dynamic (CFD) data. A key new feature in Version 3.0 is the capability to detect, extract and display key features such as vortex cores, shock surfaces and separation bubbles. These flow features are often difficult for engineers and scientists to detect in large and complex 3-D data, yet are essential for understanding flow field physics.

As computers have gotten faster, engineers and scientists are running bigger CFD simulations to solve their problems. It is not unusual for their simulations to have tens of millions of elements or cells in order to get more accurate results. This creates an even bigger job for visualizing and understanding CFD results. According to Mike Peery, president of Amtec, "The day is coming when engineers will depend on their visualization post-processing software to guide them in finding the important information embedded in these huge data files. Someday the post-processing software will automatically display the relevant key features, and give the engineer the final results and uncertainty - the answer is 42.0 plus or minus 5%."

MIT's FX (Fluid Feature eXtraction) library powers CFD Analyzer's feature extraction. FX library calculates shock surfaces, vortex cores, and separation/ attachment lines. Users select a default boundary condition to be applied to all zone boundaries, select whether or not to connect zones where nodes overlap, and specify additional boundaries and associated boundary conditions. They then choose which feature to extract.

CFD Analyzer 3.0 conveniently provides Tecplot users the fluid dynamic functions commonly used to calculate fluid dynamics variables and perform integrations. The function set is an enhanced version of the classic NASA PLOT3D Calculator. These capabilities help examine grid quality, perform spatial integrations, generate particle trajectories, extract flow features, and estimate numerical errors. For example, a raw CFD data set typically does not include the pressure coefficient or vorticity magnitude, variables that CFD Analyzer computes quickly. It also provides numerical integration of scalars and vector functions along lines, over surfaces, and in volumes. This allows Tecplot users to calculate global quantities such as areas and volumes, flow rates, total mass of a particular chemical species, forces, and moments.

Tecplot is Amtec's versatile plotting and data analysis software program. It combines general technical plotting and high-end 3-D scientific data visualization. Tecplot is intended for engineers and scientists working with large data sets, like those created with numerical simulation software (e.g., fluid dynamics and geophysics), as well as data from analysis and testing. It was designed to be a single "one-stop shop" for plotting and data visualization - with high-quality on-screen graphics and presentation-quality output. Tecplot and CFD Analyzer are available for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Linux, and most UNIX workstations. For more information visit www.amtec.com, call (800) 676-7568 or (425) 653-1200, or send e-mail to info@amtec.com.