Mentor's FloEFD targets UAV design simulations

PARIS – Mentor Graphics Corp. said it has donated its FloEFD Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software to over 700 U.S. high schools as part of the Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) contest.

Initiated in 2007, the RWDC contest aims to encourage students to embrace engineering careers and particularly in the aerospace industry. Previous year’s challenges included the wing design of a 737 aircraft, the design of Light Sport Aricraft and the tail assembly of a Cessna corporate jet. This year’s challenge consists of the optimization of commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Embedded into PTC’s Creo product for 3-D mechanical design, Mentor’s FloEFD product is meant to enable high school teams to analyze their aircraft wing, tail and fuselage designs for optimized performance.

Mentor’s FloEFD is a general purpose CFD tool serving the needs of Inventor, Solid Edge, SolidWorks as well as other popular MCAD systems. FloEFD combines all simulation steps - starting with use of your 3D CAD data for model preparation, to mesh generation, solving and results visualization in one package.

“Similar to our commercial aerospace users, we want these students to be able to focus on the design and not struggle with how to use the software,” commented Erich Buergel, general manager of the Mentor Graphics Mechanical Analysis Division.

Buergel added: “To this end we have embedded our FloEFD software directly into PTC’s Creo product using a common model and user interface. Design engineers, in addition to CFD specialists, can efficiently and accurately simulate multiple design approaches to quickly arrive at a more competitive, higher performing product.”

As part of the contest, each student team has access to more than one million dollars’ worth of professional level software, donated by various sponsors and commonly used by aerospace companies in their design of real commercial products.



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