Flomerics: Accelerating Automotive Design with Engineering Fluid Dynamics

It’s widespread knowledge that computer modeling/virtual prototyping in the form of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) can make major contributions to reducing product costs and accelerating time to market. However, many managers do not yet realize that software advances are making these benefits easily accessible to small- and mid-sized enterprises.

Thanks to a class of software known as EFD – Engineering Fluid Dynamics – there is no longer the need to hire or train CFD specialists, outsource analysis to consultants, or conduct tests on multiple physical prototypes; instead, now design engineers with standard training and working in any size company can use their existing knowledge to successfully perform flow and heat analyses and thereby dramatically reduce the number of prototypes needed. This breakthrough arose because EFD simplifies the process of setting up and running a flow or heat analysis.

Certainly, there will always be a few very demanding applications where advanced expertise is needed to fine-tune CFD meshing and solver settings in order to converge to a solution. However, our experience shows that using their existing knowledge, design engineers with no specific training in CFD codes can perform an analysis in roughly 80% to 90% of the situations they encounter.

This ability to take CFD out of the exclusive domain of specialists and bring it into the mainstream represents a fundamental change in the design process. Just as the shift from 2D to 3D CAD required a mental leap, so does EFD – and the results are perhaps even more significant.