Links - Social Media & Online Communities
Contents:
Discussion Forums
- CFD Online Discussion Forums
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- An gathering place on the web where you can meet and discuss with fellow
CFD colleagues from all over the world. The forums are visited by thousands
of CFD engineers every day and there are more than 400,000 archived messages (2012) dating back to 1998. There
are several code-specific forums here (OpenFOAM,
Fluent,
CFX,
CD-adapco,
FLOW-3D,
PHOENICS and more).
The forums are monitored by most CFD code vendors. If you have any CFD related
questions or want to stay in touch with what happens in the CFD world then
this is the perfect place to go. The only real alternative to the CFD Online
Discussion Forum is the CFD newsgroup listed below.
- LBMethod.org Forums
- A forum about lattice Boltsmann methods in CFD.
- ASME Communities of Practise
- Has several CFD related forums covering different application areas in
mechanical engineering. Most boards are a bit silent though and you have to register to get access to them.
- CFDBible
- A Yahoo! group about CFD. Not a lot of traffic.
Blogs
These are a few selected blogs related to CFD. We have tried to avoid to include everything here and instead focus on the blogs we find interesting and follow ourselves. If you have any suggestions on blogs to include here please let us know. You can also find aggregated blogs on the
CFD Blog Feeds on CFD Online.
- Another Fine Mesh
- The CFD and meshing world from they eyes of John Chawner, president and co-founder of Pointwise. John posts a weekly summary of "This Week in CFD" that is interesting and well worth following. Although Pointwise is a commercial company selling grid generation software this blog does not contain a lot of marketing. A must for everyone interested in CFD!
- F*** Yeah Fluid Dynamics
- A very nice video blog on tumblr. You can find many cool videos about fluid dynamics phenomena here. Show them to your kids, they might get interested. I like everything about this blog, except perhaps the name, which is not very family friendly, but it is a new internet trend. Must be a sign of age when we think internet trends are stupid :-/
- Symscape Blogs
- A blog by Richard Smith from Symscape. Often interesting stories from the world of fluid dynamics and CFD.
- CFD Online Blogs
- Several forum users have their own blogs on CFD Online. Some are interesting, but these blogs have not really taken off yet.
- curiosityFluids
- An interesting blog about CFD and fluid dynamics that you should check out if you like to read about physical problems related to fluids. The CFD parts often cover numerical issues and open source codes, OpenFOAM mainly.
- wyldckat CFD Online Blogs
- OpenFOAM related blog by Bruno Santos. This is the most active blog on CFD Online and worth to follow if you are an OpenFOAM user.
- CAE Watch
- A CAE related blog by Shengwei Ma at CAD-IT Consultants. Often covers CFD related issues.
- CFD, Numerical Analysis, Scientific Computing
- A blog by Praveen C. Contains some interesting post but has stalled a bit lately (Dec 2011).
- Hanley Innovations Blog
- A blog written by Patrick Hanley, owner and founder of Hanley Innovations. This blog contains both serious and fun posts, mainly related to airfoils. Interesting to follow if you are an aerospace engineer.
- FlowViz - Fluid Dynamics
- A blog written by a PhD student at Imperial College. Lots of nice fluids pictures and videos. Similar to FYFD but newer.
- The Innovative CFD Blog
- A blog by Chris Nelson, chief scientits for CFD at ITAC. Chris is working with the Wind-US CFD solver from the NPARC Alliance. His blog is interesting to follow and contains some reviews that might inteterest you.
- David Tatchell's Blog
- A blog by David Tatchell at Mentor. David has a long history in CFD. He was the deputy managing director of CHAM and co-founder of Flomerics back in 1988. The blog contains several interesting posts about the history of CFD. Lately there has not been a lot of new posts though (Dec 2011).
- Life Upfront
- Professional thoughts from Jeff Waters at MSC Software. Not only about CFD. Jeff is an active person in the online CAE world and used to work for Blue Ridge Numerics, so some of his history is in CFD. It is always interesting to read his thoughts.
- Particle in Cell
- Blogs about the Particle in Cell methods used mainly for rarefied gas and plasma physics simulations. Very specialized blog, but it is interesting for those in this field.
- ANSYS Blog
- ANSYS develops both Fluent and CFX and you can find a lot of CFD things here. Mainly marketing oriented material though, but they are the leading CFD company so what they say matters.
- Altair Corporate Blog
- Various blog posts that are often CFD related. Altair is the compay behing the AcuSolve CFD code.
- Cascade Technologies Blog
- CFD related blog from Cascade Technologies, with a focus on turbulence modeling and LES simulations.
- Convergent Science Blog
- A blog focused on meshing and engine/combustion related topics.
- IMAGINiT CFD Analysis Consulting Blog
- A blog from IMAGINiT. Has a few nice articles, but is a bit biased towards the merits of using a CFD consultancy service... This blog is a continuation of the old blog from Informative Design Partners. IDP was bought by IMAGINiT in 2012.
- Mentor Blogs
- Many different blogs by employees at Mentor. Click on the "CFD" tag to find all CFD related entries.
- Tecplot Blog
- A blog from the people at Tecplot. Contains manly marketing related posts, but it can still be interesting reading.
Twitter
Short 140-character messages from people, companies and organizations. We have tried to bring out the Twitters that are most active and interesting for people working with CFD.
- CD-adapco
- News from CD-adapco.
- CFD Online
- We use Twitter mainly to communicate with our users when we do
site updates or when the server is down.
- CFD Review
- Some of the news from CFD Review. Not sure when they update their tweets.
It is probably better to visit their site directly instead.
- OpenFOAM
- News from OpenCFD, now owned by ESI Group.
- Pointwise
- News from Pointwise. For a more active and personal side from the mesh generation world please
see the tweets from their president John Chawner.
- SU2
- News from the SU2 team at the Aerospace Design Lab at Stanford University
- Symscape
- An active Twitter from Symscape. Richard Smith is the person behind and
he also retweets other CFD related tweets that he finds interesting.
- XFlow
- News about XFlow from Next Limit Dynamics SL.
YouTube
These days you can find thousands of CFD related videos on YouTube.
The vast majority are from individual users and you will have to
search yourself to find those. Here is an example of a search
for "CFD" to get you started:
Search for CFD on YouTube.
Several YouTube users, mainly companies, are also regularly sharing videos on their
YouTube channels. Here is a selection of the best YouTube channels that
we have found:
- ANSYS
-
The largest CFD software vendor. You can find more videos if you search
for:
ANSYS Fluent,
ANSYS CFX,
ANSYS ICEM or just
ANSYS.
- BETA CAE
- Videos of webinars, workshops and conferences from the makers of the ANSA pre-processor
- CD-adapco
-
CD-adapco does not have an official YouTube channel that we are
aware of. This is an unofficial channel. You can find more videos
if you search for:
adapco or
CCM+.
The jamesadapco channel
also has some nice CCM+ videos.
- CEI, EnSight
-
Many videos created with EnSight, one of the leading CFD post-processing
tools. You can find more EnSight videos on the
macangus67 channel
or if you search for
EnSight.
- COMSOL
-
Has a few CFD related videos, focused mainly on multiphysics simulations.
- engys
-
A small company offering CFD services using mainly the OpenFOAM code.
They have several cool videos on YouTube.
- Exa
-
A fairly large company that develops and sells PowerFLOW, a Lattice-Boltzmann
based CFD code mainly used for automotive applications. They often
share YouTube videos.
- Flow Science
-
The company behind the FLOW-3D code. They regularly share videos on
YouTube. This is the company that made VOF methods available to the
large public and many of the videos are also about free surface flows.
You might find a few more videos if you search for
FLOW-3D.
You can also find some videos uploaded by their Japan office:
Flow Science Japan.
- Hanley Innovations
-
Several CFD related videos, mainly about aerospace applications.
- OpenFOAM Search
-
OpenCFD/SGI do not have any official OpenFOAM channel that we are aware of,
but this search for OpenFOAM turns up a lot of OpenFOAM CFD videos from
other users.
- Pointwise
-
Meshing related videos from Pointwise, a company developing and selling
CFD mesh generation tools. They are very active in the social media arena.
You might find a few more videos if you search for
Pointwise or
Gridgen.
- Symscape
-
A small company developing
tools around the OpenFOAM code. They are very active in the social media
arena and often share YouTube videos.
- Tecplot
-
Many videos created with Tecplot, one of the leading CFD post-processing
tools. You can find more Tecplot videos if you search for
Tecplot.
- QuickerSim
-
Develops and sells a CFD Toolbox for Matlab. You can find a few more QuickerSim related videos if you search for
QuickerSim.
- XFlow CFD
-
A fairly new CFD vendor that develops and sells meshless CFD codes.
They regularly share CFD videos on YouTube. You can find more videos if
you search for
XFlow CFD.
- VSG, Avizo
-
VSG develops Avizo Wind, a CFD post-processor.
Facebook
Facebook shines as a personal social media platform. For companies
it is mainly another way to reach out to their customers.
Our experience is that facebook pages for companies
do not add much more information than you can get by visiting their
homepages. Company facebook pages are less complete, are arranged in a time
order, does offer user feedback and comments and can perhaps be a bit less
formal with more pictures etc.
In some way the company facebook pages are a modern version of the paper
magazines many companies publish and send to their customers.
That means a mix of marketing and fun stories.
Only
a few CFD companies are on facebook. Here are the ones we are aware of:
- CD-adapco
- CEI Software
- CFD Online
- ESI Group
- Flow Science
- Pointwise
- Symscape
- Tecplot
- Visualization Sciences Group
- QuickerSim
- XFlow from Next Limit Dynamics SL
LinkedIn
LinkedIn in is a social network focused on connecting individuals. Recently LinkedIn has also offered the possibility to create groups, where individuals with a common interest can share ideas and communicate. LinkedIn is propably not the best place for group activities, it is mainly a network between individuals. Anyway, below follows a very brief selection of the most interesting and active groups in LinkedIn for people working with CFD. Finding individual users you will have to do yourself directly on
LinkedIn.
- Computational Fluid Dynamics Group
- One of two similar CFD groups of LinkedIn. This is the largest and most active group, with about 9,000 members in Dec, 2011.
- Computational Fluid Dynamics
- One of two similar CFD groups of LinkedIn. This is the smaller group with about 2,000 members in Dec, 2011.
- Mesh Generation
- A small group with 235 members in Dec 2011. Some activity, but not much.
- Computer Aided Engineering
- A group covering CFD and other CAE topic. The group has a bit activity and had 827 members in Dec, 2011.
- International Meshing Roundtable
- A group for the International Meshing Roundtable meetings organized by Sandia National Laboratories.
Podcasts
- Talking CFD
- A nice CFD related podcast by Robin Knowles at CFD Engine. Robin is fun to listen to and it is interesting to hear his interviews with CFD people.
Usenet Newsgroups
Usenet existed many years before blogs, discussion forums or even the
World Wide Web were created. Usenet was the first social media
extensively used on the Internet. Today Usenet is just a very small and very
marginal part of the social media arena on the internet. Today these newsgroups
are mainly filled with spam. It can be historically interesting
to see what newsgroups that used to be interesting though, and see what
was discussed a long time ago. So here follows a
brief overview of the groups you need to know about.
You can also find archived Usenet messages, originating from
the old DejaNews service and dating back to 1981, at
Google groups. You have to be
registered at Google to access these though.
CFD and Fluids
- sci.physics.computational.fluid-dynamics (Google groups archive)
- Discussion about CFD and CFD related issues. Has a fair amount of traffic
and several gurus follow the group - highly recommended !
- sci.mech.fluids (Google groups archive)
- More oriented towards the physical aspects of fluids and fluid flow. s.p.c.f-d
is usually better but this group is good to.
Large Scale Fluid Dynamics
- sci.geo.fluids (Google groups archive)
- sci.geo.meteorology (Google groups archive)
- sci.geo.oceanography (Google groups archive)
Other Groups
These groups are usually not about CFD, but sometimes CFD relates issues are
discussed.
- sci.math.num-analysis (Google groups archive)
- sci.nonlinear (Google groups archive)
- sci.physics (Google groups archive)
- sci.aeronautics (Google groups archive)
- sci.aeronautics.simulation (Google groups archive)
- sci.engr (Google groups archive)
- sci.engr.marine.hydrodynamics (Google groups archive)
- sci.engr.mech (Google groups archive)
- sci.engr.chem (Google groups archive)
Mailing Lists
Most of the old CFD related mailing lists have died out. If you know of a CFD
related mailing list that is still active please inform us of where it is located,
what it covers and how you subscribe to it. Good places to look for mailing lists
are:
L-Soft,
Tile.net and
Topica.
You can also search for
CFD
groups at Yahoo. Here are a few lists that still have some traffic:
- Turbulence, JISCMail
- A mailing list for discussions about turbulence. There is also an archive
with old message. Very low volume, almost dead.
- CGNS Talk
- A mailing list for discussions about the new open CFD dataformat CGNS (CFD
General Notation System ). A few mails a week.
- Lattice Boltzmann Mailing List
- A medium-volume list dedicated to Lattice Boltzmann methods for simulation
of fluid flow.
- feuser, JISCMail
- For people using and developing Finite Elements and Finite Difference software.
Medium traffic (one or a few messages a day).
Chats
There used to be a #CFD channel on
IRC but
it seldom exists any more. Hopefully something else will soon replace it. Real-time
discussions with colleagues all over the world would be nice !
News
- CFD News Feeds, CFD Online
- Aggregated news from several online news sources. Gives you a nice overview of CFD news from all over the internet. You can quickly preview all news items if you hoover over the titles.
- CFD Online, News & Announcements
- A forum where CFD news and announcements are published. Also includes a list of all new job-ads posted on CFD Online over the previous week. Has a weekly email news digest that you can subscribe to. Most posts are press-releases.
- CFD Review
- A slashdot style forum for CFD. Most posts are press-releases.
- CADdigest CFD News
- Some CFD news can be found here also.
- Desktop Engineering CFD Articles
- Articles about CFD in the Desktop Engineering magazine.
- Google News about Computational Fluid Dynamics
- No one beats Google in collecting data from other websites.
