Category: News

Cincinnati, USA and Windsor, UK, February 2013

ICON US, a subsidiary of ICON Technology & Process Consulting Limited is pleased to welcome Gail E. Spangler II as VP of Sales for U.S. North Eastern and Mid-West Region. Gail brings twenty years of commercial experience to the operation by working with a variety of engineering sectors from: CAD, CAE, CFD and ID as well as full product development consulting. Gail has earned a BS degree in Applied Business from the University of Cincinnati and an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife and two sons.

Gail will be instrumental in building a unique sales and support infrastructure for ICON’s existing and future customers in the Mid-West and North-East of the United States. The U.S. operation will provide a variety of CFD-related engineering consulting services in addition to support of ICON’s leading CFD tools and customized process applications.

David Green, Commercial Director at ICON, said: “We are delighted to have Gail on board at ICON. We are confident his customer-centric approach will have a positive impact on our customers and prospects in the US.”

 About ICON Technology & Process Consulting Limited (www.iconCFD.com)

ICON is a privately-owned CFD technology company formed in 1992. ICON’s strategy is as pertinent today as it was then: to provide high-quality independent advice and expertise in process, technology and services.

ICON has extensive experience in the use of proprietary software for CFD simulation and optimization, together with expertise in developing and supporting open source CFD technologies. It supports customers from a variety of industries including: Aerospace, Automotive, Consumer Goods, Energy, Medical and the Processing sectors.

The company’s head-quarters are in Windsor, UK with further offices throughout Europe and the USA (Cincinnati, OH).

 About ICON FOAMpro Service

Open source solving and meshing tools offer customers a cost-effective and customizable solution to fulfill their CFD Simulation requirements. The limiting factor in adopting open source-based processes in industry is often the lack of technical support, quality assurance and a robust, easy-to-use process from meshing to post-processing. Through a long established subscription service, ICON FOAMpro customers enjoy first class CFD tools, including a purpose-built GUI, combined with industrial support, embedded within a professional environment.

For further information please visit iconCFD.com/contact.

ICON USA
4555 Lake Forest Drive, Suite 650
Cincinnati, OH 45242
Tel: (+1) 513-563-3027
Fax: (+1) 513-563-3024

ICON is a Global Company with offices located:
ICON UK — ICON USA — ICON Germany — ICON Austria — ICON Greece — ICON France — ICON Spain
with additional support from ICON channel partners throughout Europe and the Far East.

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Windsor, UK and Yokohama, Japan, 29th October 2012

ICON and IDAJ, two of the world’s leading independent service providers and system integrators of Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) processes, are pleased to announce they have signed a global partnership and strategic distribution agreement.

From 1st March 2013, IDAJ, one of the largest and most successful CAE/CFD sales, services, and support organisations in the Far East, will distribute, support and jointly develop ICON’s industry-focussed CFD processes including the ICON FOAMpro family of supported technologies.

ICON have supplied high value-add, fully supported CFD-driven design technologies to a variety of industries worldwide, including automotive, aerospace, oil, gas and process sectors since 1992 and hence has been chosen by IDAJ for this long-standing leadership in the support of open source CFD technology for industry. IDAJ will support the territories of Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines.

Chingzou Hsu, President of IDAJ Co. Ltd said “We are delighted to be working with ICON in their quest to provide worldwide industry-sectors with robust, cost-effective CFD processes and related productivity and optimization technologies.”

Simon Weston, Managing Director at ICON, speaking at the opening address of The Open Source CFD International Conference in London said: “IDAJ was a natural choice as a partner with its extensive wealth of experience in supplying and integrating CFD and related technologies. The culture and ethics of both companies are identical – focussed upon providing the best existing and emerging technologies with excellent customer service. We are looking forward to adding IDAJ to the network of ICON’s existing distributors and partners, which will ensure ICON’s continued leadership in the field of industrial support of open source CFD-based solving processes.”

 About IDAJ (www.idaj.co.jp)

IDAJ is an independent services and support operation with over 80 CFD engineers complementing their total staff count of 190. The organisation has numerous offices throughout Japan, China and staff and partners based in the Far East.

Beside CFD, IDAJ also provides distribution, technical support and engineering consulting service covering broad CAE domain including FEA, Optimization, and 1D simulation.

About ICON Technology & Process Consulting Limited (www.iconcfd.com)

ICON is a privately-owned CFD technology company formed in 1992. ICON’s strategy is as pertinent today as it was then – to provide high-quality independent advice and expertise in process, technology and services.

ICON has extensive experience in the use of proprietary software for CFD simulation and optimization, together with expertise in developing and supporting open source CFD technologies. ICON supports customers from a variety of industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer goods, energy and processing sectors.

The company headquarters are in Windsor, UK with additional offices throughout Europe and the USA.

For further information please visit iconcfd.com/contact.

ICON, provider of independent technology and process engineering solutions, announced today the preliminary agenda for its upcoming Open Source CFD International Conference, to be held in London, UK on 29th & 30th October 2012.

The agenda is now available to download from opensourceCFD.com/conference2012 and features presentations from CFD specialists in industry and academia from 13 different nations. The agenda covers the current best practices and state-of-the-art in Open Source CFD and associated technologies, providing attendees with a comprehensive overview of the technology available.

Keynote Speakers include:

– Prof. E. Paterson, Virginia Tech
– Prof. K. Giannakoglou, NTUA

Visit opensourceCFD.com/conference2012 to register and for further information.

Register now !

We look forward to seeing you in London.

Windsor, UK, 5 October 2012

UK MOD (Ministry of Defence) scientists from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) have taken delivery of ICON FOAMpro, for their built environment simulation activities in civil defence and military threat assessments. Dstl use Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) to model various indoor and outdoor dispersal scenarios in public spaces and to develop protective measures.

Dstl commissioned ICON to develop further software functionalities to meet its specific modelling requirements and to further streamline the ease of setting up powerful simulations using the ICON FOAMpro CFD process. As the CFD calculations can be carried out using the open source solver within ICON FOAMpro, without the hindrance of solver licence restrictions, Dstl can maximise the number of simulations, fully utilising its considerable HPC hardware resources.

Tim Foat, Team Leader of the Fluid Dynamics and Indoor Dispersion Team at Dstl said “We are delighted to be using ICON FOAMpro in our simulation activities. The licence-free solver technology, combined with Icon’s support from their applications and development team, are ensuring a powerful, cost-effective use of resources at Dstl”.

David Green, Commercial Director at ICON, stated that: “We are pleased to be supporting Dstl with their specific scientific and military CFD-process requirements. ICON’s long term investments into its international workforce and in various CFD technology developments, has once again delivered high value-added, fully supported, industrial applications of open source CFD technology for its client”.

 About Dstl (www.dstl.gov.uk)

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory maximises the impact of science and technology (S&T) for the defence and security of the UK, supplying sensitive and specialist S&T services for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the wider government. Dstl is a trading fund of the MOD, run along commercial lines.

It is one of the principal government organisations dedicated to S&T in the defence and security field, with around 3,500 scientists, technologists and engineers at its three main sites: Porton Down, near Salisbury, Portsdown West, near Portsmouth, and Fort Halstead, near Sevenoaks.

However, they start from the presumption that work should be completed by external suppliers unless there is a clear reason for it to be led by Dstl. At present, around sixty percent of the approximately £400 million MOD non-nuclear defence research programme, managed through Dstl, goes to industry and academia on successful delivery of work projects.

 About Icon Technology & Process Consulting Limited (www.iconcfd.com)

ICON is a privately-owned CFD technology company formed in 1992. ICON’s strategy is as pertinent today as it was then: to provide high-quality independent advice and expertise in process, technology and services.

ICON has extensive experience in the use of proprietary software for CFD simulation and optimization, together with expertise in developing and supporting open source CFD technologies. It supports customers from a variety of industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer goods, energy and processing sectors.

The company is head-quarters are in Windsor, UK with further offices throughout Europe and the USA (Cincinnati, OH).

  About ICON FOAMpro Service

Open source solving and meshing tools offer customers a cost-effective and customisable solution to fulfil their CFD Simulation requirements. The limiting factor in adopting open source-based processes in industry is often the lack of technical support, quality assurance and a robust, easy-to-use process from meshing to post-processing. Through a long established subscription service, ICON FOAMpro customers enjoy first class CFD tools, including a purpose-built GUI, combined with industrial support, embedded within a professional environment.

For further information please visit iconcfd.com/contact.

Windsor, Bedford, UK, 27 September 2012

ICON and ARA, two of the UK’s leading innovators in the development and support of Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) processes, are pleased to announce that they have signed a strategic partnership. Their joint expertise in CFD technology development, along with ARA’s ability to combine wind tunnel testing and the complementary services of model design, component manufacture and aerodynamic analysis, means the partnership can offer high quality, fully validated products to the aerospace industry.

ICON, who since 1992 has supplied high value-added, supported CFD-driven design technologies to a variety of industries worldwide, including AIRBUS and its component suppliers, is excited to be working on collaborative software technologies with ARA, who will be able to validate the civil and defence applications using their established test facilities and extensive experience in aeronautical applications.

Bob Bosher, Chief Operations Officer at ARA said “We are delighted to be working with ICON on mutual technology collaborations and service offerings which will be provided globally to civil and defence aircraft manufacturers”.

David Green, Commercial Director at ICON, stated that: “ARA was a natural choice as a partner with its extensive experience in working with global aerospace manufacturers in a number of different technology areas, combined with a company culture that fits well with ICON – focussed upon providing excellent customer service. We are looking forward to this collaboration”.

 About ARA (www.ara.co.uk)

Aircraft Research Association was established in 1952 as a wind tunnel test centre for the UK aircraft industry by 14 British aerospace companies. Today, this independent non-profit distributing research and development company has gained worldwide recognition as a centre of excellence, providing the aerospace industry with high quality aerodynamic and related services and facilities to support the design, development and through-life upgrades of commercial aircraft, military aircraft and defence system programmes. For more information visit www.ara.co.uk or contact Nigel Corby on 01234 350681, business@ara.co.uk

 About Icon Technology & Process Consulting Limited (www.iconcfd.com)

ICON is a privately-owned CFD technology company formed in 1992. ICON’s strategy is as pertinent today as it was then: to provide high-quality independent advice and expertise in process, technology and services.

ICON has extensive experience in the use of proprietary software for CFD simulation and optimization, together with expertise in developing and supporting open source CFD technologies. ICON supports customers from a variety of industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer goods, energy and processing sectors.

The company head-quarters are in Windsor, UK with further offices throughout Europe and the USA (Cincinnati, OH).

For further information please visit iconcfd.com/contact.

September 12, 2012, Windsor UK.

ICON see this latest acquisition by ESI of OpenCFD Limited as another reinforcement of the widely accepted view that open source CFD technology and related services, are now an integral and invaluable part of industrial engineering simulation.

It is too early to say how the acquisition of OpenCFD Limited and the OpenFOAM trademark by ESI will be perceived by the CFD community. However, as for the last 20 years, at ICON we will remain completely committed to serving our clients’ interests in our specialist and sole technology focus of CFD processes, ensuring greatest value and productivity, to drive our customers’ product and process design.

We continue to welcome any collaboration that takes CFD forward, with our principal aim being to ensure the delivery of high quality CFD process to our rapidly growing client base. ICON remains a preferred independent CFD solutions provider to industry – developing and supporting CFD process, based upon both open and proprietary technologies.

As a privately-held company, without public shareholders interests to satisfy, ICON can and will continue act independently and to re-invest income into the CFD processes that add greatest value for it’s customers. Working together with various third-party partners in technology, territory support provision and hardware, ICON will continue to strive to provide the greatest value from, and impact upon, CFD-related processes.

OpenFOAM^® and OpenCFD^® are registered trademarks of ESI^®

iconCFD Optimize 2.1.1 is an extension module to iconCFD. It provides a streamlined process for the solution of optimal design problems applying ICON’s latest developments in the field of continuous adjoint optimization.

This News Cast gives a short introduction to the theory of CFD-based adjoint optimisation and presents the capabilities for adjoint topology optimization available in iconCFD Optimize 2.1.1. A second News Cast will describe adjoint shape optimization functionalities.

Adjoint Optimization

The goal of optimization in CFD is to minimize a cost function (also objective function), J (α,v,p), subject to a converged solution of the Navier Stokes Equations, R (α,v,p), in the flow domain, Ω,

 

by finding optimal values for a set of design parameters, α.

The adjoint method consists in using Lagrange multipliers to enforce the constraint of the Navier Stokes Equations on the optimization problem (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_multiplier).

L (α,v,p) is the augmented cost function; the adjoint velocity, u, and the adjoint pressure, q, are the Lagrange multipliers of the problem.

Every optimal point must fulfil 3 conditions:

– A converged flow field must be obtained by solving the Navier Stokes equations:  

– While α is treated as constant, an optimal point must be at a critical point of the augmented cost function:

The adjoint equations are derived from this condition (described in detail by Petropoulou [1]). They are a set of partial differential equations, from which the adjoint velocity and pressure are obtained.

– When the first two conditions are fulfilled,  may be computed. This term expresses the sensitivity of the cost function with respect to the design variables. For optimal design parameters this sensitivity also becomes zero: 

The major advantage of the adjoint technology over other gradient-finding methods is that the effort for computing the sensitivities (gradients) is relatively small and independent of the number of design variables.

Adjoint topology optimization in iconCFD Optimize 2.1.1

Topology optimization is used to compute an optimal geometry for internal flow problems, such as ducts. The user simply specifies the available design space. During the optimization the sensitivity information is used to iteratively block cells around the optimal flow path.

Figure 1: Topology optimisation of internal ducting system, minimizing power dissipation.

adjointSimpleFoam is a Reynolds averaged, turbulent, incompressible, steady state adjoint solver. It can be used with a variety of cost functions:

– Power dissipation (pressure loss)
– Drag
– Lift
– Flow uniformity at a surface or in a volume
– Mass flow rate
– Shear velocity (for acoustics)
– Turbulent content in a volume (for acoustics)
– Swirl in a volume

Simulations with adjointSimpleFoam can easily be set-up with the iconCFD 2.1.1 pre-processing tools.

For problems where the internal flow domain is embedded in a larger, complex geometry (i.e. a cooling duct in a car underhood), solving the optimization problem in isolation, may result in an overall non-optimal solution. In order to efficiently and accurately solve this type of problem ICON has developed the adjointSubCase technology.

With the adjointSubCase function object it is possible to solve the adjoint optimization problem locally, while solving the flow equations globally (using for example simplePorousFoam) and therefore retaining the feedback from the external flow in the optimization loop.

This method ensures appropriate flow conditions at the inlets and outlets of the sub-domain, without having to solve the adjoint equations in the whole simulation domain. Since the adjoint sub-case is created automatically at the initialisation of the simulation run, adjointSubCase is as easy to set up as any other function object.

Figure 2: Click here to watch video about adjointSubCase topology optimisation of brake cooling ducts.

For further details please follow this link to contact us.

[1] S. Petropoulou, “Industrial Optimisation Solutions Based On OPENFOAM^® Technology” European Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics ECCOMAS CFD, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2010.

In addition to the functionalities for species transport presented in the last iconCFD News Cast, new solvers and models for Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) are introduced in iconCFD 2.1.1.

Two transient solvers for the transport of kinematic particles in a pre-calculated steady-state flow field are available:

– uncoupledKinematicParcelFoam: compatible with compressible flow solvers (e.g.: rhoSimpleFoam)
– incompressibleUncoupledKinematicParcelFoam: compatible with incompressible flow solvers (e.g.: simplePorousFoam)
In both solvers the particles can be grouped together in parcels, in order to reduce the computational effort. These are injected into the simulation domain at patches, single points or point clouds. Parcels are defined by specifying the particle density, diameter distribution, release velocity, release rate and the weight or number of particles per parcel.

Set-up of Lagrangian Particle sources as line, plane and box in iconCFD GUI

The user can define how the particles react when they hit specific wall patches. They can bounce back, disappear or remain at their position on the wall. The user can also choose which forces are applied to the particles (gravity, pressure, virtual mass forces) and whether or not a stochastic dispersion is calculated using information from the pre-calculated turbulence fields.

All particle related settings are specified in the kinematicCloudProperties dictionary which contains information about:

– Physical properties of particles
– Particle injection
– Particle-wall interaction
– Modelled forces on particles
– Discretisation schemes for the LPT equations
– Dissipation Model

Click here to watch video about LPT functionality in iconCFD

The solvers output various volume fields (e.g.: particle number, concentration, mass, and velocity in each cell) and Lagrangian fields (e.g.: position and mean particle velocity vector, diameter, density of each parcel). For further post-processing the utility particleTracks can be used to create track lines in VTK format from the transient particle position results.

The iconCFD GUI is fully capable of writing the kinematicCloudProperties dictionary and setting up LPT simulations with uncoupledKinematicParcelFoam and incompressibleUncoupledKinematicParcelFoam.

Click here to watch video of rain drops impacting on a moving car simulated with LPT in iconCFD

iconCFD 2.1.1 will soon be available. You will be informed in a separate email.

For further information please follow this link to contact us.

•  

iconCFD 2.1.1 introduces full support for new species transport solvers and accompanying models and boundary conditions:

– speciesTransportFoam is a transient species solver using a pre-calculated steady-state flow field.
– buoyantBoussinesqSpeciePimpleFoam computes a transient or pseudo-transient, incompressible, turbulent, buoyancy-driven flow along with a species transport solution.

Both solvers are capable of simulating the transport of multiple species. Two new dictionaries have been added:

– speciesTransportProperties: defines the necessary physical properties of the different species (i.e.: density, mass diffusion coefficients …).
– speciesSourceProperties: enables time dependant injection of species in specific regions of the simulation domain.

A new inlet boundary condition is available for simulating the recirculation from outlets to inlets (time delays, specific specie filters, additional sources). This can enable for example the simulation of building and aircraft ventilation systems.

Set-up of specie source in iconCFD GUI

With an additional feature in the fieldProcess function object the user can calculate and output the species concentrations in different units (kg/m3, ppm, …).

The iconCFD GUI allows full set-up of speciesTransportFoam and buoyantBoussinesqSpeciePimpleFoam cases, using the recirculation boundary condition, volumetric specie sources, and species transport properties.

Click here to watch video about newly implemented species transport functionality in iconCFD

Some example applications are simulating the dispersion of smoke, gases or pathogens in buildings and ventilation systems, the mixing of gases or fluids in industrial processes…

iconCFD 2.1.1 will soon be available. You will be informed in a separate email.

For further information please follow this link to contact us.

Due to an error by the Conference Hotel it is now necessary ICON, host of the Open Source CFD International Conference, change the dates of the conference, taking place in London. The new dates are now Monday 29th October and Tuesday 30th October, 2012.

The venue remains unchanged:

The Tower,
St Katharine’s Way,
London E1W 1LD
United Kingdom

To take advantage of the Early Bird discount, please click here. Offer ends 29th June 2012.

Abstracts are invited for a broad range of topics and should aim to highlight validated methods and breakthrough technologies. Works should demonstrate how adoption of open source CFD software is moving CAE process and business forward.

The following types of participation are all available at the event:

– Oral (Slides) Presentation + Written Paper;
– Oral (Slides) Presentation only;
– Poster Presentation + Written Paper;
– Poster Presentation only.

The paper submission deadline is 15 June 2012 and a submission form is provided at opensourceCFD.com.

We look forward to seeing you in London.