Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) Software

Capable of working through the core Navier-Stokes equations fundamental to CFD, our solvers have been optimized for specific physical phenomena. This platform experience enables engineers to streamline their workflows and switch from one physics to another with ease. Often, engineers are forced to consider speed or fidelity, but with our platform you can investigate fluids, structures, or acoustics holistically.

Unique interface and customizable palettes aside, post-processing will also need to scale with the size of larger simulation problems. Rather than waiting for a simulation to complete, Cadence offers co-processing where running simulations and monitoring solver convergence in real time can provide early insights.

Co-processing is the most efficient way to visualize intermediate results concurrently to the simulation solving. Where many large simulations require huge swathes of CPU memory, one can even render transient plots while the solver is running to greatly reduce disk space usage and data processing time.

It isn’t enough to simulate airfoil conditions these days as vehicles are being developed across subsonic, transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic environments with unique numerical elements to be solved for each. Within aerodynamics, much of what you are solving are Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with additional applied computational techniques like direct numerical simulation (DNS), and large eddy simulations (LES) as considerations in the computational field of aerodynamics.

Some of the applications here involve cooling simulations, convective heat transfer, as well as determining any potential radiation and radiative effects. You can use technology like heat exchangers to improve the efficiency of engines and other combustion phenomenon. Or you could use CHT to simulate the opposite end of the spectrum in frost and icing effects for hypothermal environments like arctic waters. Both high-temperature environments and freezing atmospheric conditions are all considerations for the vast potential of heat transfer analysis in CFD.

These models, widely used, have nevertheless many deficiencies, which can be addressed by scale-resolving simulations based on Large Eddy Simulation (LES) or Detached Eddy Simulations (DES) combining RANS and LES methodologies.

Accounting for vast changes in temperature like cold flows, simulating heat exchanger profiles, and optimizing their performance, as well as examining the micro and nano-scale materials flowing through any system can all be on the plate of a thermal aerospace engineer. In addition, working through aerodynamic efficiency, controlling acoustics, and engaging in the next inspiration for increased speeds and efficiency in travel are all vital for CFD simulations to be able to accomplish.

Our decades-long commitment to the marine environment and ship hydrodynamics has resulted in fine-tuned resistance, propulsion, sea-keeping, and maneuvering calculations. Any matrix set up to account for unique speeds, angles, sea conditions, or other domain definitions is able to be automated in our CFD environment. Additionally, fully transient hydraulic calculations are available within our solver software with offshore and marine industry-specific post-processing capabilities. On top of all this, Cadence boasts a years-long commitment to excellence demonstrable in yacht performance in the America's Cup and Vendée Globe.

Thinking beyond the blood though, as pollution levels rise and airborne illnesses continue to gain in potency, utilizing CFD-based air flow techniques both internal to the body to regard lung capacity and performance as well as modeling breath externally to understand is literally vital.

Whether virtually prototyping the human body or trying to plan and simulate for a future outbreak scenario, CFD can enable health and biomedical researchers to arrive at the conclusions necessary to protect the people most vital to them.

Due to its mathematical complexity, the Navier-Stokes Equation is typically not solved explicitly. Various techniques exist to approximate the solution computationally. Instead, applications of these equations are commonplace in CFD in techniques like the finite volume method (FVM), finite difference method (FDM), finite element method (FEM), and various spectral methods.

One way to consider the groupings of equations at work in the Navier-Stokes equations is to describe them as the convection, momentum, and diffusion equations. These each will describe parts of the modeled flow like ordered motion, stress tensors, viscosity, turbulence and boundary layers, in sum working together to model the overall effect of the flow in question. Mastering these equations and their potential applications and interpretations allows mastery over your flow representations and accuracy, vital for your CFD processing.

Within external aerodynamics, to use an aircraft as an example, an aircraft will move in the surrounding air causing friction between air and the aircraft. This friction is due to the shear stresses that must be simulated and modeled accurately.

Similarly, in internal flows, the shear stresses generated friction forces create a pressure drop between the inlet and the exit of the flow domain. Drag and pressure drop are an endlessly optimizable field of study within CFD that our tools are more than ready to provide answers and experimentation for.

Supersonic aircraft create sonic booms when breaking the sound barrier. Hypersonic speeds, considered above Mach 5, historically have been developed in the form of expensive and less efficient missile systems from as early as the 1930s and 1960s. While commercial development at hypersonic speeds is still in early development, space applications, such as the flow around a returning space shuttle, remain highly challenging for CFD.

In more localized phenomenon, the Venturi effect can be seen within engines and turbines; however, larger structural designs like skyscraper or city buildings can also trigger the Venturi effect. The cornerstone for utilizing the Venturi effect in various systems will be the Venturi tube, which features a recognizably narrow chokepoint with wider ends that increases fluid velocity.