nTop
nTop has launched a new computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions designed to eliminate bottlenecks in the simulation process.
Hoping to empower engineers to iterate more efficiently, the company has launched nTop Fluids. It follows the acquisition of cloudfluid earlier this year.
Since bringing cloudfluid into the fold, nTop has been working to integrate the company’s native GPU computational fluid dynamics technology with its implicit model kernel. The aim has been to deliver a solution that is ‘100-1000 times faster’ than conventional CPU-based solvers.
Per nTop, traditional CFD requires specialised expertise, takes days and weeks to prepare models and meshing, and needs significant computational resources. All of this, it has determined, is not conducive to a the highly iterative design processes the company wants to enable.
Leveraging the Lattice Boltzmann Method, nTop Fluids is said to overcome these limitations. It directly integrates with nTop to allow users to run CFD analysis directly on their computational models, with feedback delivered ‘orders of magnitude faster.’ Engineers will now be able to make design changes, analyse each new iteration and see results in minutes, according to nTop.
The company has carried out a series of benchmarking studies to validate the capabilities of nTop Fluids. nTop says the software has shown to match or exceed the accuracy of established CFD tools, while also exhibiting the potential to reduce computational cost and the manual effort required to create geometry and physics datasets.
Prior to launch nTop provided NASA Goddard and Siemens Energy with early access to nTop Fluids.
“The new CFD capabilities in nTop eliminate our bottleneck with simulation,” said Markus Lempke, Computational Design Engineer for Additive Manufacturing at Siemens Energy. “Being able to run analysis directly on the model without needing a mesh has transformed how quickly we can evaluate designs. This approach to CFD demonstrates nTop's ability to address real engineering challenges with computational design.”
"Working directly with implicit models for CFD analysis enables us to explore design iterations at unprecedented speed,” added Aleksansdr Souk, Research Development Mechanical Engineer at NASA Goddard. “nTop continues to solve real engineering problems by integrating the tools we need in one cohesive platform."
The initial release of nTop Fluids focuses on incompressible internal flow applications, with nTop listing heat exchangers and thermal management systems, as well as manifolds, valves, and turbomachinery components, among the suitable applications. A develop roadmap will see capabilities of future releases expanded to conjugate heat transfer for comprehensive thermal analysis and enhanced post-processing and visualisation tools.
