Focus on: Computational Fluid Dynamics

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is now used for a huge range of applications across all industrial areas. Its use can provide insight that is difficult, dangerous or impossible to obtain from other methods, yet the complexity of the physics of interest and numerical methods used can prevent or limit the ability to capture usefully realistic results.

Over the past few years, NAFEMS has produced a significant number of resources on the subject, and we've collected some of these together here.

Many of the resources below are available free for you to download, with others accessible exclusively to NAFEMS Members, e-library subscribers, or to buy directly from our website.

We hope you find this brief update useful. If you have any comments, or thoughts on future areas that you'd like to see us focus on in the future, please get in touch at focus@nafems.org

CFD Working Group

NAFEMS' technical activities are coordinated by a number of specialist working groups, drawn from the NAFEMS membership and industry at large.

These working groups identify areas of interest to the analysis community that require new information and guidance materials to be developed.

The CFD Working Group was formed in 1995 to promote the safe and effective use of industrial CFD, and has been guiding the CFD activities of NAFEMS ever since. The CFD Working Group area of the NAFEMS Website has a wealth of information available on our CFD activities, as well as a number of resources and guides.

International Journal of CFD Case Studies

The purpose of the NAFEMS CFD Journal is to disseminate information to the wider NAFEMS community who are interested in the application of CFD for industrial design and can help in showcasing best practice through case studies. The benefits of using case studies for teaching and research is well recognised, particularly in bridging the gap between theory and practice and allowing the application of theoretical concepts to be demonstrated. Case studies allow the engineer to see how experienced practitioners have utilised different approaches to solve specific situations.

The case studies published in the Journal can be used in formal training, for example, in lecture-based or discussion-based classes or as part of CPD and selfstudy.

Like all NAFEMS activities it is vital that the Journal meets the needs of the community. To that end, we invite everyone to take part in a short on-line survey, where your views will be critical in influencing the future direction and content of the Journal.

How To Model Internal Flows in Engineering Systems

This webinar introduced 1D Fluid System Simulation (System CFD) and showed how it is used to analyse and design internal flow systems in complex fluid engineering. We compared system techniques with 2D and 3D CFD techniques – showing that they are complementary. The webinar presented a number of case studies to discuss its use in analysis and design of engineering systems with surge; thermal management; hydraulics; rotating machine.

View the recording here

NAFEMS CFD Benchmarks - Volume 1

One of the earliest roles of NAFEMS was to produce benchmarks that could be used by both software developers and simulation practitioners to demonstrate the predictive capability of engineering simulation and analysis tools. There is now a substantial library of such material, primarily for computational structural mechanics applications. This is the first of a number of similar volumes for CFD applications.

Free Online Resources

The NAFEMS Website is home to a number of freely available CFD resources, which have been produced in order to help guide the CFD community.