FORT WORTH, TX (16 October 2012)—Pointwise, Inc. will team with aerodynamics engineer Darren Grove and Kevin Colburn, sales manager at CEI, in a free webinar that will demonstrate how North American Eagle™ (NAE) has used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to design aft suspension fairings to reduce drag on their supersonic ground vehicle in preparation for an attempt to break the land speed record of 763 mph with a goal of 800 mph. The webinar will be at 11 a.m. CST (-6 GMT) on 7 November. To register, go to www.pointwise.com/webinar. Pointwise presenters will be Dr. Chris Sideroff and Travis Carrigan, technical sales engineers. The purpose of the NAE Land Speed Program is to test the capability of a land based vehicle to safely transition through supersonic speed. The by-products of this challenge have the potential to impact high-speed rail, ground effects of high-speed aircraft in the landing configuration as well as deceleration methods utilized by high-speed vehicles. The webinar will demonstrate how to • Rapidly generate repeatable, complex, viscous, unstructured meshes with T-Rex • Employ CFD as a cost-effective tool to help an all-volunteer team attempt the world land speed record • Address challenges of designing a stable, low drag wheel system for a supersonic ground vehicle • Efficiently extract drag and stability information from a large number of calculations using EnSight

Mr. Grove has been performing CFD analyses using Pointwise for preprocessing, CFD++ from Metacomp for flow solutions, and EnSight from CEI for post-processing to guide the design that will improve the drag and stability characteristics of the NAE vehicle. This webinar will discuss how Mr. Grove used Pointwise and EnSight to help design aft suspension fairings to reduce overall drag on the car while maintaining stability and control. To help validate the CFD simulations, a recent field test at Oregon's Alvord Desert was conducted in which comparisons between experimental and computational results will be shown.

Dr. Sideroff joined Pointwise as a technical sales engineer in September 2007 after working as a petroleum engineer for the NATCO Group, a CAD engineer for ARV Development, and a computer technician for Harddata Ltd. Dr. Sideroff earned both a B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Alberta, in 2000 and 2003. He earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University in 2009.

Mr. Carrigan joined Pointwise as a technical sales engineer after completing his M.S. in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington in May 2011. He interned at Pointwise beginning May 2008, producing demonstration and application videos and working in technical support, doing grid projects and quality assurance testing. During a prior internship at Vought Aircraft Industries, Mr. Carrigan worked as a quality engineer on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner Program. He received his B.S. in aerospace engineering in 2009 from UTA. Mr. Grove holds a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland and an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, CA. Specializing in CFD and design, with a strong background in wind tunnel and flight testing and IT support, he is experienced in subsonic, transonic, and supersonic aerodynamics. Mr. Grove has more than 18 years’ experience in CFD technologies and has worked on programs like the F/A-18E/F and Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) for the Naval Air Systems Command, and the Boeing 787, 777, 737MAX, and Open Fan Rotor programs. He analyzed performance on the next generation of aircraft as part of the product development group at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Mr. Colburn joined CEI in March 2007 after 14 years in automotive, combustion and aerospace fields as a CFD engineer. He has used a wide variety of tools and techniques in the utilization of CFD within real world design cycles, including seven years using EnSight. Mr. Colburn received his B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic University in 1995. NAE’s all-volunteer team, headed by owners Ed Shadle and Keith Zanghi, is using CFD to better understand the complex aerodynamics of a car traveling through the sound barrier. They are using a modified Lockheed F-104 Starfighter as the foundation for the car. A supersonic ground vehicle has to deal with the aerodynamic effects of the ground and the suspension system, which an aircraft does not. The suspension system affects the drag, lift, and stability of the vehicle. Prediction of the drag is crucial to ensuring the modified General Electric J-79 turbo-jet engine delivers enough power to enable the NAE vehicle to reach its 800 mph goal. Understanding the car’s stability provides the driver with the confidence that he will be able to control the vehicle as it approaches and passes the sound barrier.

Pointwise, Inc. is solving the top problem facing engineering analysts today – mesh generation for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The company’s Pointwise software generates structured, unstructured and hybrid meshes; interfaces with CFD solvers, such as ANSYS FLUENT, STAR-CCM+, ANSYS CFX and OpenFOAM as well as many neutral formats, such as CGNS; runs on Windows (Intel and AMD), Linux (Intel and AMD), and Mac, and has scripting languages that can automate CFD meshing. Large manufacturing firms and research organizations worldwide rely on Pointwise as their complete CFD preprocessing solution. More information about Pointwise is available at www.pointwise.com. CEI is the developer of a visualization software package called EnSight, widely used in the engineering field to visualize, analyze, and communicate simulation results. EnSight's ability to extract quantitative and qualitative information from any CAE simulation in a single, easy-to-use package allows users to fully understand, visualize, and communicate the simulation results. For more information, see www.ceisoftware.com. Pointwise is a registered trademark and Pointwise Glyph and T-Rex are trademarks of Pointwise, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owner.

#

Caption for image: CEI-PW-NAE-combined.png

CFD++ solution of the North American Eagle at 700 mph with design cycle 1 fairings. Composite image showing unstructured viscous mesh generated with Pointwise, overlaid by stream-wise velocity on ground and symmetry planes, vehicle surfaces colored by pressure and near surface streamlines.