New software provides 3D airflow prediction
Flomerics has released Version 6 of its Flovent software for airflow prediction in buildings.
Said to feature greatly enhanced 3D-visualisation and enhanced treatment for glazed surfaces, curvilinear geometry, angled fans, centrifugal blowers and air recirculation devices, the software can create a source of "virtual particles" anywhere in the solution domain to help visualise 3D airflow to and from that point. A new tetrahedral object provides improved representation of curved 3D shapes, meaning that fans and louvres set at an angle to the grid can now be simulated, as well as centrifugal blowers in which the air outlet is at 90 degrees from the air inlet. Particles or stream-lines can be colour-coded with a secondary variable, such as local temperature or contaminant concentration, and a 3D "walk-through" feature is now available. Texture maps can be applied to all surfaces to create photo-realistic environments, and animations can be saved as video clips, which may then be included in presentations. Automatic optimisation simplifies the process, requiring users only to specify a design goal and upper and lower limits for design variables in order to find the optimum combination of design variables. The software supports the latest 64-bit processor chipsets, including AMD's Athlon 64 and Opteron, and Intel's Xeon and Pentium4 with EM64T.
