Engineers drowning in non-linear mathematics and tasked with linking microscopic causes to extreme effects can be forgiven for forgetting that there are many other faces to these challenges, as described in this long and engaging interview with Simon Ramo, who graced a magazine cover in 1957. It’s a useful lead-in to a question touched upon in a much more recent discussion – but that’s in the next update!

Higher order cells are not just harder to create: earlier issues have pointed to the work Tecplot is doing on visualizing solution fields over these elements. This article presents some of the issues that currently have no clear solutions, but must still be dealt with routinely.

CFD poses several challenges for Finite Element Methods, the most visible of which is the grid in the viscous layer. Recent research into the benefits of higher-order interpolation for CFD simulations faced a pretty basic problem: how do you get the grids? Read this article for a review of what Pointwise has been doing in this area – and view this webinar on some applications of these grids.