Building upon its acquisitions of NUMECA and Pointwise last year, Cadence Design Systems has launched a comprehensive suite of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions to simulate the performance of multiphysics systems in a streamlined workflow. Targeting multiple vertical markets, including automotive, turbomachinery, marine, and aerospace, its new Cadence Fidelity CFD software claims to offer superior

performance and accuracy compared to standard flow solvers.

Cadence said Fidelity CFD introduces a next-generation flow solver featuring high-order numerics, scale-resolving simulations and massive hardware acceleration. Included in Fidelity CFD are several specialized flow solvers for marine and turbomachinery applications, as well as general-purpose flow solvers for a broad range of flow types. It enables engineers to address wind noise around road vehicles, expand the flight envelope of next-generation aircraft designs, optimize the power generated by wind and gas turbines, and cut fuel consumption of marine vessels, while maintaining high accuracy and dramatically reducing turnaround time.

Major technological innovations include the high-order flow solver, which with its advanced simulations of fluid turbulence has demonstrated the ability to predict aerodynamic drag on an automobile up to 10X more accurately than a traditional CFD solver. In addition, the turnaround time for these highly accurate simulations can be reduced from weeks to a day or less.

Fidelity CFD claims to be unique in its’ combined meshing expertise that comes from the former NUMECA and Pointwise teams. While geometry and meshing can consume up to 75% of a CFD engineer’s time, Fidelity CFD provides a reduction in turnaround time. The release of Fidelity Pointwise Meshing accelerates the technique used for meshing the flow field around commercial and military aircraft and space launch vehicles by up to 3X. The software’s unified mesh generation technologies from NUMECA and Pointwise delivered critical capabilities to a major aerospace customer.

Automotive applications

Meshing capabilities also enhance automotive applications. Toyota Motor Europe’s manager of vehicle performance engineering R&D, Antoine Delacroix, said, “We chose NUMECA Autoseal and Hexpress to be our standard workflow for CFD preprocessing. They allowed us to reduce our total lead time and work hours respectively by 91% and 97% while consistently providing high-quality meshes with excellent layer coverage. Due to the high level of automation and standardization, creating a mesh from CAD does not require long pre-processing training. Since becoming part of Cadence, the team has continued to deliver valuable new solutions. We like the integration of all these tools in Fidelity CFD.”

Optimizing water flow for marine

The capability of the software goes beyond airflow to the flow of water for marine applications, as seen in the America’s Cup yachting race. The technical director​ at America’s Cup champion Emirates Team New Zealand, Dan Bernasconi, explained, “Although AC75 yachts spend most of their time flying above the water, we saw in AC36 that the race can all be decided in the acceleration and takeoff phases. Having a hull design optimized for hydrodynamic efficiency in takeoff and touchdowns is crucial to winning the America’s Cup, and at Emirates Team New Zealand, we rely on Cadence’s Fidelity Marine Solver to predict this performance. Fidelity Marine is the leading simulation tool for hull hydrodynamic modeling and forms an important part of our tool suite.”​

Cadence’s senior vice president and general manager of the custom IC and PCB group, Tom Beckley, commented, “Fidelity CFD significantly improves fluid dynamics performance and accuracy across all industry verticals. For advanced applications that need to accurately model turbulence—including automotive, turbomachinery and aerospace applications—the Fidelity CFD software’s next-generation flow solver opens new opportunities for customers to rapidly garner unprecedented engineering insight into the performance of their systems.”

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