LinkedIn CFD Group Newsletter.

1. April 2008
Issue 1
L INKED I N CFD
A networking forum for CFD professionals
Getting Started Inside This Issue
Getting Started 1
LinkedIn CFD group was created to provide the
CFD Pain 1
interested CFD professionals a place where they
In My opinion 1
can share news/ideas, seek help, and network
with other CFDers. LinkedIn site only allows for
group members to contact others on individual
basis. Members who want to contact the whole
group at once could go through this newsletter for
requests, news, and opinions. Email us at:
CFDlinkedin@gmail.com
In My Opinion
CFD Pain Survey
By Kamran Fouladi (fouladi@infomec.cc)
By Greg Burgreen (burgreen@SimCenter.MsState.Edu)
Optimal LLC invites you to participate in a simple (The following is an excerpt of an article I wrote
three-question survey inquiring about significant for CFD Review a few months ago)
pain or bottlenecks associated with your CFD
Substantial efforts have been underway for
applications. It is called: The CFD Pain Survey.
decades to make CFD an integral part of the
design process. Government research labs and
Based on survey results, Optimal wishes to
large commercial corporations have been using
identify a few articulate alpha-software testing
CFD for decades and many of them use number of
partners to assist us during the product
in-house and commercially developed CFD codes.
development stage of our software.
However, for CFD to truly become a viable design
tool, it needs to be utilized by small to mid-range
This is your opportunity to provide direct input
companies much like the structural analysis tools
toward software aimed at reducing your CFD pain.
being used now. Since most of these companies
can’t afford the resources to develop in-house
The CFD Pain Survey is found at:
codes, then the success of CFD as a design tool
http://www.o-ptimal.com/survey.html
rests squarely on commercial software. Factors
such as grid generation, problem setup, and cost
Best,
(to name a few) currently impede the mass
Greg
utilization of commercial CFD software by non-
traditional users.
(Continued on page 2)

2. In My Opinion (cont.)
LinkedIn CFD
Group Manager
Kamran Fouladi In the conceptual design stages, one can expect
major and frequent changes to the geometry. Grid
Phone: generation is a time consuming and labor intensive
610-291-6642
task for simulation of complex configurations and
geometry changes can significantly delay the
E-Mail:
CFDlinked@gmail.com design process. Additionally, commercial CFD flow
solvers are developed as general purpose codes
and they include numerous options and parameters
to set. A user must possess great deal of
experience to be able to set up complex problems
correctly. This requires fundamental knowledge of
CFD and a few days of training just won’t do.
Meanwhile, cost might be the biggest issue for
most companies to use CFD. Most commercial
software are on expensive and annual license
purchases, which make them prohibitive to acquire.
In short, until the barriers are removed for small to
mid-sized companies, CFD will not be used
extensively by “the masses” and it would remain a
“useful but not necessary” tool.