In early 2001, Fluent will release version 8.6 of its FIDAP CFD code, which is primarily dedicated to the materials processing industry. This version will provide enhanced features of particular interest to the biomedical, metallurgy, semiconductor, glass, and food industries.

Fluid structure interaction will couple the flow of fluid material together with the induced deformation of solids. Two new hyperelastic models, Ogden and Mooney-Rivling, will allow for more accurate simulation of human tissue behavior and rubber-like materials, while reduced order elements will greatly simplify the modeling of thin structures, such as skin and artery walls. Solids will be free to move in the entire space to better reproduce the deformation of vein walls, heart leaflets, and the windpipe for example. The flow through porous media will be greatly enhanced as well, to allow for analysis of the flow and deposition of molecules, such as cholesterol or drugs, through the stomach or artery walls.

Several solver improvements will simplify the user's work and reduce calculation time through the use of new 3D pyramid elements and exponential shape functions, for aluminum extrusion and flow with high Peclet number. The export procedure from the graphic postprocessor will be simplified as well. In addition to current platforms, several 64-bit architectures will be supported: Hewlett-Packard HP-UX 11, SGI 6r10, and Sun Solaris 8.

FluentNEWS