Talking CFD

In the second of our "insights" series Brian Willis, of specialist engineering consultancy Astrimar, is taking us deep into the world of CFD for oil & gas. Not deep into the technicals, but deep under the ocean & into the mud. Hold onto to your headphones, we’re going downhole for a spot of plugging & abandonment.

Brian gives us a flavour of what CFD looks like in this particular niche - what’s tricky & what’s commonplace, including:

• the extreme scales that dominate their models

• how the levels of uncertainty in the geometry, environment & the flow conditions, impact the kind of simulations & techniques employed

• how this sector might be a great fit for the lesser-spotter digital twin

• how, despite the technical challenges, CFD is proving a feasible & economical alternative to experimental testing. Particularly when it comes to developing & proving new technologies

Shownotes

• Connect with Brian on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-willis-20847343/

or send him an email, but you’ll have to listen to the show to get his email address 😉

• Find out more about Astrimar @ https://www.astrimar.com/

You wait around for a CFD consultant interview & then two come along at once. This is the second “founder” interview of the season & the second CFD consultant - duff scheduling, my bad.

Today I’m chatting with James Linfield, one half of the dynamic duo behind Navier Flow Consultants – a (relatively) new CFD consultancy based in Nottingham, UK.

James gives us the benefit of his recent experience & shares his take on:

• the transition from employee to “boss”

• choosing a niche to focus on

• advice for those looking to start a CFD consultancy in today’s market

• their approach to the cloud & why they have a stack of machines keeping the office warm

• the importance of networking, for everyone, but particularly for those looking to start a new businesses

Shownotes

Check out Navier Flow Consultants @ https://navier-flow-consultants.com/

Connect with James on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-linfield-51a37175/

🎉 We’re Back 🎉

It's time for another a round of "social" episodes. In this season, Simon & I will be discussing our takeaways from the latest interviews, sharing cool CFD-things we’ve seen on the internets & generally shooting the CFD-breeze. It's the kind of conversation you might have in the pub with your fellow CFD-nerds - if you're not too busy meshing, that is.

This week we touch on:

• what we’ve been up to (it’s been a while)

• dealing with “shiny object” syndrome

• whether AI + Adjoint = Unemployment?

• CFD vs Wind Tunnel tension from our previous F1 lives

Here are the links to the things we mentioned

• Upstream Applied Science (Simon’s new consultancy) - https://www.upstream-applied-science.com/

• 1ST Automotive CFD prediction workshop - https://autocfd.eng.ox.ac.uk/

• Monolith AI - the artificially intelligent engineering data platform -https://www.monolithai.com/

Finally, connect with us on LinkedIn & mention the podcast 👍

• Simon on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-hubbard-48b96310/

• Robin on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinknowles/

This is the first of our new style of shows where I talk to CFD practitioners / experts / “those that do” to find out what CFD looks like in their world.

We typically start these episodes with an overview of how CFD gets used in their industry, then zero in on some of the uniquely challenging aspects and dig a little deeper.

In this show I’m talking to Stefano Capra of engineering consulting giants Ramboll, about some of the ways CFD is used in the design of the built environment & the challenges faced in that sector.

Stefano gives us his insight into what’s challenging, what’s “normal” and what’s on his CFD wish list, including:

• why CFD in the built environment is about more than just pedestrian comfort studies

• how CFD is becoming increasingly accepted as an aid to the established experimental methods, as opposed to a replacement

• how CFD routinely helps save millions of dollars in construction costs (and thousands of tons of CO2 ) by accurately predicting the wind loading on new designs

Links

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• Connect with Stefano on LinkedIn (mention the podcast 👍) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefano-capra-97350035/

• See the Ramboll homepage for more info on the kind of projects they help engineer

- https://www.ramboll.com/

It’s the first episode of Season 04 & we’re back with the usual problem - how to condense 25+ years experience running a simulation business into a single episode. We fail (as usual) but it still makes for an interesting show.

In this episode I’m talking with Eric Miller, one of founding team of PADT – an expert simulation consultancy which first opened its doors 25 years ago this year.

Eric shares his thoughts on:

- migrating from an internal research group at a large company to an autonomous small business

- the evolution of their computing from SGI Octane through the Pentium revolution and on into the cloud

- whether the current crop of open-source tools make commercial software a harder sell?

- where the simulation “low-hanging fruit” has gone & how consultants need to be extracting higher value from their simulation tools

- building the kind of business where it’s a pleasure to come to work in the morning

Links

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• PADT – https://www.padtinc.com/

• Connect with Eric on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/emillerphx

• All Things ANSYS podcast – http://www.padtinc.com/blog/podcast/

• The book Eric mentioned – https://www.amazon.com/dp/111943470X

A quick heads-up that Season 04 of Talking CFD is inbound, with new episodes starting 24th September 2019.

Please make sure you're subscribed in your favourite podcast app & following us on the socials to make sure you don't miss a thing.

www.talkingcfd.com

Someone once described these episodes as Simon and I "noodling it out" - you get to listen to us working through our thoughts and (hopefully) coming to some conclusions or at least giving you something to think about. And that description probably best fits this episode.

We started out with a provocative-ish question, left over from the NAFEMS episode & expanded from there. We didn't put this one to bed, but instead we opened up the question of what "doing CFD" really means.

Question of the day (not the one in the show title) but "Do you DO CFD or is it just a tool in your toolbox?"

We don't get out much. So when one of us does manage to break away from our workstation and get to a conference, it's worth talking about. Simon gives us the lowdown from the NAFEMS UK conference including his key takeaways, what themes stood out & what was missing.

Question of the day "which conferences are worth getting out of the office for and why?"

Conference Link – https://www.nafems.org/2018/uk/

In this episode we break down some of the NASA CFD Vision 2030 document, to see if our vision of CFD in 2030 looks anything like NASA's (spoiler alert - not so much ;-).

We pick out some of what we feel are the most important topics & put them in context of where we (Simon & I - not the industry as a whole) are now & where we think they're going.

Plus I expand on why I think this document is actually just a shopping list for a cash-strapped NASA.

NASA CFD Vision 2030 Study: A Path to Revolutionary Computational Aerosciences

Read the study - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140003093.pdf

We've still got our head in the the clouds this week, covering some of the topics we didn't touch in the last episode. Including –but not limited to– addressing your cloud security concerns by having a cloud-in-a-box delivered to your front door (not exactly elastic computing). The data transfer conundrum & why I think that you need to think a little differently when it comes to putting a cloud CFD workflow together.

We also go on to talk about the new crop of cloud-only/cloud-first CFD providers. Is it a problem if you don't control the version of the code you're running? How might you deal with vendor lock-in when you never get a copy of the code?

This week's question is - "What's stopping you from cloudifying your CFD?"

Checkout The Beginner's Guide To OpenFOAM on AWS @ http://learn.cfdengine.com for a cloud-first CFD workflow on Amazon Web Services