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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Pushing the Boundaries of Manufacturing and Design:
It’s Elemental, Dr Watson …
Innovation
Graphical representations of output from
computational fluid dynamics analyses conducted
using the Elemental software to investigate flows
over wing profiles and stresses on an aircraft wing
and fuselage.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is an exciting new
computer-based technology that provides insight into the
dynamics of fluid flow, enabling the building of a model
to represent a system or device, with accurate prediction
of the detailed fluid dynamics offering unprecedented
insight and allowing opportunities for virtual prototyping
that would be otherwise too costly in the ”real” world.
UCT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering is home to
an “all South African” CFD code dubbed “
Elemental
”.
Pioneered by Professor Arnaud Malan in 1999,
Elemental
is already supporting next-generation aircraft design,
and Airbus, one of the leading aircraft manufacturers,
“found the
Elemental
code to be scientifically innovative
while outperforming competing codes by a significant
margin, particularly in terms of accuracy”.
Elemental
also
plays a pivotal role in the European Union FP7 project
“Future Fast Aeroelastic Simulation Technologies”.
The global commercial CFD software market currently
generates over R5.6 billion annually and is one of the
fastest-growing fields in engineering. It is becoming
the de facto standard strategic design tool in sectors
ranging from biomedical devices and power generation
to aircraft design and the space industry.
The technology will spawn two UCT spin-out
companies – Numerus Technologies (Pty) Ltd and
Elemental IP Holdings (Pty) Ltd – during 2013, which
will allow South Africa to enter lucrative software and
modern technology markets, and which will be well
positioned to ride Cape Town’s International Design
Capital 2014 wave.
Elemental
software forms the basis for the DST/NRF
SARChI Research Chair in Industrial CFD, which was
awarded to UCT in 2012. This will not only contribute
to the commercialisation drive, but will support the
UCT initiative to further world-class CFD research and
technology development.
The global commercial CFD software
market currently generates over R5.6
billion annually