Hello all,

Are any of you using CAD-free CFD? I have read a lot of paper about it. The idea is to place CFD upstream of the CAD in the design process. The CFD engineer provide to his CAD colleagues dimension range (length, diameters, thickness, etc...) and limits within which he can design the product according to the CFD analysis. And then the final design comes back to cfd to check it is within the ranges and results. It is reported to decrease the time to market much more than "integrated CFD in the CAD" where endless discussion occurs. This allows for a margin for errors and assumptions from the CFD side. The knowledge of these margin and errors comes from experience or expertise only. It is a more realistic approach in the manufacturing world.

What is your view on this?

Guten Abend,

Herbert

Hi Herbert

You are right. A CFD engineer can hold upon the design processes and dictate the design features of any process , not only in manufacturing but also in software development groups.

cheers Karthik

Herbert, you got any references for the papers you've read? I'm interested.

I saw a presentation by a car manufacturer at the STAR-CD european user conference, they were using CFD as a first level design tool. As far as I can remember it was a duct of some type in an engine bay and instead of specifying the duct and then analysing the flow in it, they were specifying a fluid entry and exit point (inlet outlet) and a maximum geometric extent. From this the duct was formed following the fluids path and not vice versa.

from http://www.esteco.com/News/news.php

18/05/2004 ESTECO and DaimlerChrysler announce a partnership for the industrialization of a topology optimizer in CFD.

ESTECO and DaimlerChrysler announce a partnership for the industrialization of an innovative technique for fluid dynamic optimisation. The technology, called AUTODUCT (patent pending), has been developed by the DC research center in Stuttgart, and represents a major breakthrough in topology optimization for CFD applications. ESTECO will soon make it available for testing through its CAE Web Portal.