Hi Jeff

Where are you launching the X-flow in USA? I’m aware of that X-flow is a Madrid-based company, but no much about it.

Thanks for the information

Hi Scott, thanks for sharing your experience. LBE based CFD is seldom taught in classroom, especially in Engineering departments. For CFD researchers from physics background, LBE actually is more “native” for them.

Another overlooked application for LBE is multiphase flow problems. N-S approach relies on too many contradictory assumptions to get the inter-phase terms.

Anyway, LBE still need time to prove and to improve. This need efforts from both academic and commercial spheres. But unfortunately, most established CFD vendors have not invested heavily on this, due to the uncertain ROI in short term.

The partnership between MSC and XFlow will force other CFD vendors to re-consider their technology investment strategy in LBE, at least, they may start to sow some seeds.

I come from a background using the NS codes ANSYS and OpenFoam in Formula One and have always been interested in the LB formulation that Exa were using, but never had the opportunity to test and validate it.

As more customers are relying on the automated geometry cleaning and automated meshing without even looking into the details, which has a profound impact on the results, then this solution may indeed offer a more accurate approach.

An interesting area of development and I am sure that we will continue to see this grow in the future.

Best of luck to the XFlow team.

Scott Beeton
http://www.aerodesign.com.au

Hi Jeff,
thank you very much for your input, and the detailed explanation. LB approach definitely has been overlooked in CFD market in last decade.

Yes, the users now have one more distinctive option.

Jumping to MSC’s bed is a wise action because XFlow need greater exposure. And MSC need a stunning CFD solution. Best wishes for the marriage.

Hilarious– there aren’t too many CFD jokes or puns out there… thanks for adding another! Already a fan of your writing. Keep up the good work.

It’s interesting that few people have heard of EXA- even die hard CFD fans seem unaware of LB for the most part. I do think the implementation of LB in EXA’s product and XFlow have gotten rock solid since EXA first promoted LB. These will, indeed, be some exciting times in the CFD world!

You are correct that LB is inherently transient and unsteady. That doesn’t mean it can’t be used for steady state problems, though. You just have to wait for the model to reach a “pseudo steady-state” condition. That sounds ironically similar to watching a residuals plot go to zero in a RANS code 🙂

Having said that, there will certainly be many cases where a RANS code will outperform an LB code for steady state problems. On the other hand, how long does it take to clean up the geometry and create a valid mesh for that RANS code? I’m really looking forward to exploring that business case.

My gut says that initial implementation for XFlow will be as supplement to traditional CFD for many customers. So, you’ll use it for models that have a lot of transient/unsteady action, crappy-hard-to-mesh geometry, free surface needs, etc. In other words, the things traditional CFD codes aren’t particularly good at.

BTW: I work for MSC and am involved in the XFlow launch here in North America. Here’s a super fast video overview:
http://portal.sliderocket.com/ASVLN/XFlow-Meshless-CFD-Intro

-Jeff