Category: News

Windsor, UK and Yokohama, Japan – 13th March 2013

IDAJ and ICON, two of the world’s leading independent service providers and system integrators of Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) processes, are pleased to announce an IDAJ investment to become the majority shareholder in ICON.

 The news follows on from the earlier announcement in October 2012 which signalled the plan for IDAJ to become Far East Distributor of ICON products and services. Both companies have been successfully trading independently for over twenty years and will now combine their resources in software and methods development, engineering services and support provision on a formal basis.

Whilst the two companies will continue to trade under their separate identities IDAJ and ICON, the considerable synergies of the combined group (and its sales and support agents) signify that it will be able to offer the global market access to over 150 multi-skilled engineering personnel. These staff will be focussed upon the single aim of providing the finest independent supported CFD processes available to industry.

ICON have since 1992, supplied high value-add, CFD-driven design technologies to a variety of industries worldwide, including automotive, aerospace, oil, gas and process sectors. IDAJ identified ICON as the perfect partner in which to make an investment given its long-standing leadership in the development and support of open source and proprietary CFD solver technology for industry. IDAJ will sell, support and jointly develop ICON’s products in the territories of Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines.

Chingzou Hsu, President of IDAJ said “We are very pleased to acquire a majority stake in ICON and believe that this new formal partnership will be good news for our combined customer base. We envisage that the investment will accelerate the software development process and support provision for not only existing customers and markets but also for new territories and emerging industries.”

Simon Weston, Managing Director at ICON, speaking at the Inaugural Meeting of the two companies said “I welcome the investment by IDAJ. We are all looking forward to combining resources, strengths and experiences to provide our current and future customers with the best CFD technologies and processes available.”

  About IDAJ (www.idaj.co.jp)

IDAJ is an independent services and support operation with over 70 CFD engineers complementing their total staff count of 180. The organisation has numerous offices throughout Japan, China, UK and staff and partners based in the Far East.

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

IDAJ is the leading CAE/CFD company which provides integrated solutions and broad services including software development, distribution, engineering consulting, simulation process automation and optimization and creation of tool-chains with its high engineering skills. IDAJ has nearly 20 years experience as a CAE/CFD engineering company serving up to 800 customers, covering almost all industries from automotive, power generation to chemical process both in Japan and China.

  About ICON (www.iconCFD.com)

ICON is a privately-owned CFD technology company formed in 1992. ICON provides the highest-quality independent advice and expertise in process, technology and services. Its aim is to provide the latest innovation at an accessible price.

For the last seven years, ICON has led the industrialisation of open source-based CFD calculations through a unique business model, offering superior price performance to customers by:

– Deploying its international development team to establish robust software and processes, driven by the needs of industry.
– The development and maturation of productivity tools and optimization comprising of a mix of open source and proprietary software.
– Using its global multi-lingual support network and partners to provide best practice advice, first class documentation and support packages tailored to the demands of a diverse user-base.
– Providing training and post-purchase after care either from ICON offices and its distributor network or as required on-site anywhere in the world.
– The company head-quarters are in Windsor, UK with additional offices throughout Europe and the USA.

For further information please visit iconCFD.com/contact or contact Julia Daus directly on +44 1753 751 400.

ICON is the organiser of the annual Open Source CFD International Conference: the definitive long standing industry-focused event for simulation technologies based on open source CFD technologies. The conference attracts experts from academia and industry who each year share their views and experiences on deployment of such technologies. Industry segments which have been represented include but are not limited to Oil & Gas, Steelmaking, Automotive, Motorsport, IT, Chemical, Tobacco Industry, Defence and Security, Renewable Energy and Consulting Engineering.

In order to join other presenters and delegates for the 7th International Conference in 2013, to be held 24th-25th October in Hamburg, Germany, receive further information or register, please visit ICON’s sister site opensourceCFD.com.

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.

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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.