Overlooked CFD Opportunities

Or…how to get more bang from your CFD buck

You’ve got the software & hardware sorted. You’re establishing a lean CFD habit and it’s becoming integral to your design process. You’re testing ideas early, you’re prototyping less — you’re making progress. But what happens when the novelty wears off? When CFD becomes something that you just do. How can you pick up the pace of innovation again & squeeze a bit more bang from your CFD buck?

These 9 suggestions probably aren’t part of your usual design cycle. They’re all about applying your existing process to areas you might currently be ignoring. Areas that could do with some help. All with the goal of re-invigorating innovation, increasing understanding and maybe even boosting sales. All without buying more hardware or software.

Break The Rules

CFD can be a cheap proving ground for “what if” scenarios, particularly effective when those scenarios break the rules.

1. Real Rules & Regulations

Is your product subject to third party regulations that constrain it’s dimensions, or it’s shape or it’s operating conditions? It’s not unusual to find those constraints popping up as design excuses — “If only we could do X then we’d be miles better off.” There might be a goldmine hiding behind those regulations. Or there might be nothing in it — just test it already. If you uncover a goldmine, then maybe it can be the start of a discussion with your regulator. Or maybe it’ll be the carrot to reward innovation within the rule box.

2. Manufacturing Rules

This is a redux of the regulation idea. But this time we’re looking for product features that aren’t paying their way performance-wise. Perhaps they’re heavier than needed? Perhaps they’re expensive to make? Perhaps they’re custom when stock would do?

For example — perhaps those nice fillets (so easy to add in CAD) make almost no performance difference but add 10% to the manufacturing bill? A trivial example, but you get the idea. You’re looking to weigh manufacturing cost against performance benefit & ultimately improve your product’s bottom line.

3. “This is how we’ve always done it”

This is about investigating those company mythologies that develop over time. “We tried that in 1986 & it was a disaster” or “That’s how we’ve always done it”. Do these views still hold in the current product scenario? You aren’t looking to disprove the old ways here. Some views are just as valid now as they were in the ’80s.

Reverse Engineering

I mean this both in the “3D scanning & measurement” sense & the “looking back to understand where you went wrong” sense.

4. Reverse engineer yourself

If you’re doing CFD early in your design cycle (and you should be) then design changes can creep in downstream of your last CFD run. Even if they don’t, manufacturing tolerances add up, deformations vary & tooling wears out. It’s common for your CAD model to be geometrically different to your end product. Why not use CFD to find out if these differences are hurting performance? Back-to-back a late-stage CAD model (or a 3D scan of your product) against your last CFD run with an eye on your key performance criteria.

5. Reverse engineer your successes (& failures)

Do you have a unicorn or a lemon in your product portfolio? Something that performed much better (or much worse) than you thought it would. Why not revisit it with your current simulation process for added insight? Take a product with surprising performance and try to figure out why that happened. Especially powerful if the product pre-dates your adoption of CFD.

6. Reverse engineer your competition

This could be controversial — but why not reverse engineer your competition? Take their best product and 3D scan it, disassemble it, chop it up or just make key measurements. You can’t work out why a product works by just looking at it. So test their product the same way you test your own. Figure out where you’re deficient and work out how you could leapfrog them.

This doesn’t work for every product. But, if their product is commercially available, a direct swap-out for yours and significantly better than yours — then maybe it’s worth a go. That said — do not just copy it — what a wasted opportunity & you’re better than that.

Kick-Ass Marketing

The contribution of CFD to your marketing is probably, at best, minimal. I’m not talking about adding a couple of contour plots or a photo-realistic action shot to your website. I’m talking about using CFD to educate your customers and staff to take their understanding of your product to the next level.

7. Customer Education

You should have learnt a lot about how & why your product works from your CFD. Re-package a little of that knowledge into something you can share with your customers & prospects. This has several positive side-effects. They get an understanding of what makes your product tick, which in turn helps them understand why you’re better than their other options. It also shows you know your onions & that your products are the result of some serious development.

If you’re currently thinking — “there’s no way I’m giving that info to my competitors” — relax. I’m talking about sharing details that your customers & prospects will find valuable. This is stuff your competitors already know. The difference is, they aren’t talking about it. You’re the one helping to educate customers. And it’s their view that’s important. Your competitors might have reverse engineered you by now anyway!!!

8. In-House Education

Help everyone in your company understand how your product works and why it’s great. This helps the design team avoid making changes that might reduce performance. It gives the sales team more ammunition to shoot down objections and identify opportunities. Plus it helps give everyone else the warm and fuzzies when they understand what it is their company really does.

9. Innovative Superiority

Are you in a sector where 3D CAD is unusual, let alone simulation? Then why not get some marketing mileage out of it? Perhaps a case study highlighting the science that went into your latest & greatest design? Hammer it home that you guys are industry leaders in the adoption of new technologies. Feel free to throw in a photo-realistic render if you really must — but please go easy on the streamlines and the smokey wakes.

Just pick one

Don’t try to do all of these on top of running your core CFD process — you might grind to a halt. But when you have the chance, just pick one and give it a go. Some of them could even produce a return that justifies your CFD investment in their own right. I’d probably start with the marketing and manufacturing ideas. New business leads & reduced manufacturing costs could return a decent wedge.

Bottom line — you won’t know until you give one of them a go.