NEWS BRIEFS
Morrisville, N.C. — CEI announces EnSight Gold 7.2 with flow-feature extraction that allows engineers and scientists to automatically visualize complex computational fluid dynamics (CFD) interactions. EnSight Gold 7.2 also adds multi-pipe rendering and new parallel-processing capabilities. CEI’s EnSight and EnSight Gold are used by 350 organizations worldwide to analyze, visualize and communicate computer-aided engineering and scientific research results.
“Flow-feature extraction within EnSight Gold represents a major advancement in commercial CFD visualization,” says Kent Misegades. “Until now, aerospace and automotive engineers had to rely on visualization of primitive variables or their derivatives. With EnSight Gold 7.2, they can automatically visualize and animate those factors that most impact the integrity of their designs.”
EnSight Gold 7.2 provides automatic detection and display of major flow features such as shock waves, vortex cores, boundary layer separation and reattachment lines, surface flow topology, and boundary layer characteristics.
Shock wave feature extraction allows users to isolate and display only the shock waves within the CFD analysis. This feature is valuable for aerospace engineers analyzing high-speed airflow characteristics for aircraft, rotorcraft and missiles.
Vortex core feature extraction is ideal for determining areas with strongly swirling flows, which could have positive or negative impacts. Vortices over an aircraft wing, for example, might greatly increase its lift. But, they could also create strong turbulence leading to structural fatigue. Vortices generated by an automobile can increase its drag, create noise, and possibly cause decreased visibility in the rain. The ability to visualize this feature gives designers much more control in determining how vortices will impact their designs.
Boundary layer separation and attachment lines allow engineers to pinpoint areas where the flow no longer remains smooth near a solid surface. This leads to increased turbulence, drag and, in the case of aircraft, a dramatic reduction in lift.
Surface flow topology provides a snapshot of how flow behaves directly on the surface of an airplane or automobile, for example. The resulting visualization is similar to the oil-smear technique used in wind tunnels.
Boundary layer characteristics depict flow quality at any location on a solid surface. Four different boundary layer attributes can be automatically extracted and visualized: thickness, displacement thickness, momentum thickness, and skin friction coefficient.
“Feature extraction techniques are changing the way fluid dynamicists analyze large CFD simulations,” says Dave Kenwright, a principal research scientist at MIT specializing in CFD visualization. “Engineers can reduce the analysis time of multi-gigabyte datasets from weeks to hours and identify previously unseen features in computational simulations. CEI has implemented state-of-the-art algorithms developed by leading university researchers.”
In addition to flow-feature extraction, EnSight Gold 7.2 provides support for multi-pipe graphics systems, such as those typically used in high-end visualization and VR environments. EnSight Gold 7.2 offers multi-pipe, single display (monster mode) graphics for faster rendering; multi-pipe rendering for multiple flat displays and PowerWall-type displays; and support for 3D input devices. New parallel processing capabilities also have been added in EnSight Gold 7.2 to accelerate I/O, data and visualization processing speeds.
A pre-release version of EnSight Gold 7.2 is available now and the final version will be released in December 2000 through CEI and its worldwide distributors. EnSight, EnSight Gold, EnLiten and EnVideo are exclusive products of Computational Engineering International (CEI). CEI has corporate headquarters in Morrisville, N.C., and authorized distributors around the world. In addition to its products, CEI provides consulting services to engineers and scientists from organizations that use computational methods for research, product design or product refinement.
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