CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
31 March 2005
Implementation Investments
Fluent User of the Year Award Winners Visualize CFD Results With CEI's EnSight
Three of five winners of Fluent, Inc.'s recently announced CFD User of the Year Awards used CEI's EnSight software to visualize their results. A panel of CFD experts selected five winners from more than 100 papers and studies published in 2004 by users of Fluent's CFD software.
Dr. John Hart with the University of Sheffield won Most Innovative Use of CFD Technology for an analysis of Great Britain's Olympic cyclists. Hart scanned the cyclists and their equipment in road-race and time-trial positions and created 3D computer models from each scan.
The models were analyzed with Fluent's software and visualized in EnSight to predict aerodynamic performance and develop custom drag improvements for each cyclist. The British Olympic Cycling Team won several medals at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Dr. Tamer Hassan and a team of researchers from several Japanese universities and hospitals received the Most Impact of CFD on Society honors for research on intracranial surgery. The team combined CFD analysis with MRI scan data to create a patient-specific software modeling tool for neurosurgeons to use in planning treatment and follow-up procedures.
Grids of the blood vessels were created from the 3D scan data and imported into Fluent software. The CFD data of predicted blood flow within the brain for patients with ruptured aneurysms was visualized in EnSight.
Most Impact of CFD on a Business Process was awarded to Dr. Matt Hyre, associate professor at the Virginia Military Institute. Hyre examined glass bottle manufacturing procedures to identify the step in the process that was causing defects. He simulated several alternate design options, using Fluent's CFD software to predict thermal flow around the bottles and their impact stress regions.
The results were visualized in EnSight, and the stress predictions were used to redesign the thickness distribution of the molten glass for increased bottle strength and decreased defects. Hyre's suggestion for a new mold was retrofit to the current manufacturing machine. It saved the manufacturer weeks of downtime by not having to test several molds on the line, resulting in a savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
CEI ( http://www.ensight.com ) offers a suite of tools for engineering and scientific simulation, including meshing, plotting, animation and data visualization. The company's software can be run on every type of computer, from laptops to the most advanced VR displays. CEI has corporate headquarters in Apex, N.C., and authorized distributors around the world. In addition to EnSight and related products, the company provides consulting services to engineers and scientists from organizations that need to visualize computational results for research, product design or product refinement.
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