Case Studies

Aerospace:         Sikorsky Solves Challenges of Coaxial Rotor Helicopter

When a company claims to have solved a challenge that has bedeviled its industry for years, it must be ready to prove that its idea will really fly. And that, quite literally, is what Sikorsky Aircraft is prepared to do. A leader in the design and manufacture of advanced helicopters for commercial, industrial, and military use, Sikorsky has used new technology to help significantly improve the performance of the conventional coaxial rotor, a stacked pair of high-performance counter-rotating rotors.

Automotive:        Audi Soiling study

Small things often sell cars and create brand loyalty: the positioning of the cup holder; how the seat molds to your body; the thunk of the door when it closes. Add to that list how particles – whether they are rain, snow or dirt – disperse across the surface of a car.

Automotive:        DaimlerChrysler Pump study

The purpose of a recent study performed by DaimlerChrysler was to compare the performance of Harpoon-based CFD against previous solutions using tetrahedral meshes.

Automotive:        Behr chooses Harpoon to aid in-car passenger comfort

Turning up the car’s heating or switching on the air-con are such common everyday tasks that drivers take them for granted. But hidden behind those simple-looking vent flaps are some pretty complex geometries

Automotive:        Harpoon speeds up CFD analysis at Rieter Automotive

Designing the modern day car has become an extremely complex problem. Not only must the car be pleasing to the eye, but it must be comfortable, reasonably priced and fuel efficient as well.

Environmental:   Arup uses Harpoon for Sheffield City Hall airflow

How do you test the effectiveness of something you cannot see? That is the task that faced engineers at Arup, an international consultancy firm providing engineering design services for the refurbishment of Sheffield City Hall. 

Environmental:   EPA uses Harpoon for modelling winds in urban areas

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency`s (EPA) National Exposure. Research Laboratory is working with the US EPA`s Scientific Visualization Center on the Urban Microenvironments project.  The project simulates human exposure to environmental pollutants in urban microenvironments.

Environmental:   Smoking or non-Smoking?

Smoking has well documented detrimental health effects in both those who smoke and the passive smokers around them. Recent initiaitives by various governments around the world have seen smoking banned within restaurants and bars. Some of these restaurants have claimed that the lack of choice has forced a significant proportion of their customer base elsewhere and so affected their profits.

Medical:              Harpoon gets teeth into biomechanics research

While military applications and crash simulations have long been hot areas for computational solid mechanics, advanced computer software is bringing biomechanics – with its highly complex structures and morphologies – further into the fold. The use of mechanical analysis techniques in cell biology, the nervous system and even dental implants and fillings is benefiting from timesaving advances in Harpoon, the extreme mesher, developed by Manchester-based, Sharc.

Medical:              Harpoon helps with soft and hard tissue traumatology

The group for structures and material modelling at the university of Zaragoza , Spain is also an advocate of Harpoon. The main research line is the numerical analysis and modelling of hard and soft tissues, focussing on applications to traumatology. The group has published models for internal and external bone remodelling, and analysed the influence of different kinds of prosthesis for proximal and distal femoral and tibial injuries, as well as knee arthoraplasty.

Medical:              Penn State uses Harpoon to help simulate respiration

Like many parts of the human body, the lungs have remained an untamed frontier in terms of visualizing and simulating the respiratory process. Modern medicine has identified the form and function of the lungs, but man has yet to witness the respiratory cycle of the human lung first hand, to fully understand the process and how it is affected by disease, pollution and other inhaled substances.

Naval:                  Scientists Use Harpoon to Design Custom Surfboards

Two surfers in Hoboken, NJ, have set out to make their mark on the sport of surfing, but their plan doesn’t include riding the perfect wave. Instead, they’ve taken to the lab with another strategy in mind.