CFD Online Logo CFD Online URL
www.cfd-online.com
[Sponsors]
Home >

Links - Social Media & Online Communities

Contents:


Discussion Forums

CFD Online Discussion Forums [GOOD]
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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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 [GOOD]
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 [GOOD]
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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

Podcasts

Talking CFD [GOOD]
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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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 [GOOD] (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)
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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).

Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

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 !
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link

News

CFD News Feeds, CFD Online [GOOD]
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.
Go to top Go to top             Suggest new link Suggest new link