CD-adapco
 |
 | |
| Company type | Privately Held |
|---|---|
| Industry | CAEsoftware |
| Founded | Melville, NY(1980) |
| Defunct | 25 January 2016 |
| Headquarters | Melville, NYUSA |
| Products | STAR-CCM+ STAR-CD STAR-Design |
| Owner | Peter Steven MacDonald, President (deceased 2015) |
Number of employees | ~900 (2016) working at 34 different offices across the globe. |
| Website | cd-adapco |
CD-adapcowas a multinationalcomputer softwarecompany that authored and distributed applications used forcomputer-aided engineering,best known for itscomputational fluid dynamics (CFD)products.[1][2][3]In 2016 the company was acquired bySiemens Digital Industries Software.[4]
Origins
[edit]Analysis and Design Application Company (stylized "adapco" ) was founded in New York in 1980 as an engineering consultancy company focusing onfinite element methodanalysis.[5]In 1987, Adapco invested in and began to collaborate with Computational Dynamics, a startup company formed by members of a CFD research group atImperial College London.Eventually the two companies began to jointly trade under the name CD-adapco.[6]
In their 2009 annual user conference, CD-adapco announced that the company had grown 22% in 2008, and they expected similar results in 2009.[1]Professional Engineering Magazine described this as "recession-proof performance" and went on to point out that this success is especially noteworthy considering that many of the company's customers are in the automotive industry, a sector of the economy that was, at the time, suffering record low sales levels.[1]During the financial downturn of 2009, CD-adapco launched their "No Engineer Left Behind" program, which provided free STAR-CCM+ licenses and training for displaced and unemployed engineers.[7] In April 2016, Siemens acquired CD-adapco for US$970 million.
Products
[edit]
STAR-CD
[edit]CD-adapco's legacy CFD package, STAR-CD, was praised byRenaultautomotive design engineers as a "world class design package". Nearly 75% of the points won during the 2005Formula Oneseason were awarded to drivers of cars that were designed with STAR-CD.[3]
STAR-CCM+
[edit]In 2004, CD-adapco opted to shift their attention from improving STAR-CD to completely rewriting theircomputational fluid dynamics (CFD)algorithms and tools. The company gambled that in the end, starting from a "blank slate" with a group of experts would produce a better result than continuing to work improvements into their old products[8]In early 2004, the company introduced this new product, STAR-CCM+, the "CCM" standing for "computational continuum mechanics".[9][10]The application employs a client-server architecture, to allow users to solve problems from a lightweight computer, such as a laptop, while the computationally expensive math is done on a remote machine. This substantially reduces the need for expensive desktop computers—a requirement of some other similar packages[11]
Even in periods of major economic downturn, few customers cut back on annual licenses.[1]CD-adapco has speculated that their product's success has been partially because their application was designed from the start to simultaneously solve fluid flow and heat transfer problems. Competing products often consist of separate solvers coupled together, which requires that both be kept in agreement; a time-consuming complication that degrades accuracy.[1]
STAR-CAD
[edit]STAR-CAD is a range ofproduct lifecyclemanagement-embedded tools that allows engineers to performcomputational fluid dynamicsanalysis from within their company's chosencomputer-aided designenvironment. STAR-CAD integrates withCATIA,Pro/Engineer,SolidWorksandNX.[12]
Fuel cells
[edit]In a partnership with theUnited States Department of Energy,CD-adapco developed anexpert systemto model and analyzesolid oxide fuel cells[13]
Technology
[edit]
Meshing of computational domain
[edit]The first release of STAR-CCM+ included the world's first commercially available polyhedralmeshingalgorithm.[14]The use of a polyhedral mesh has proven to be more accurate for fluid-flow problems than a hexahedral or tetrahedral mesh of a similar size (number of cells),[15]but is considerably more difficult to create.[15]
Automatic surface repair
[edit]Included in STAR-CCM+ is a tool called a "surface wrapper", which "shrink wraps" a user's computer-aided design geometry, filling any holes, overlaps or cracks.[16]The company says that this feature cuts geometry preparation time down from days to minutes.[16]
Siemens acquisition
[edit]Siemens and CD-adapco have entered[when?]into a stock purchase agreement for the acquisition of CD-adapco by Siemens for a purchase price of $970 million.[17]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^abcdeBen Sampson (April 29, 2009)."Growth Industry".Professional Engineering Magazine.[permanent dead link]
- ^"Garuda, the car that runs 180km per litre!".
- ^abTotal F1."CD-Adapco helps Renault to success".
{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^"Siemens to Acquire Simulation Software Supplier CD-adapco".
- ^"CD-adapco ORIGINS: THE BIRTH OF adapco".mdx2.plm.automation.siemens.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-05-12.Retrieved2020-06-30.
- ^MILLIOT, Frederic."Icons of CFD: David Gosman".Retrieved2020-06-30.
- ^"CD-adapco Launches No Engineer Left Behind Program for Displaced and Unemployed Engineers".Desktop Engineering.March 6, 2009. Archived fromthe originalon March 14, 2009.RetrievedOctober 1,2009.
- ^"CD-adapco Group Releases STAR-CCM+".May 6, 2004.
- ^Gould, Lawrence S. (October 1, 2004)."The trends in CFD are continuous, dynamic, and real".Automotive Design & Production.RetrievedOctober 1,2009.
- ^"STAR-CCM+ V2.08: Cranking Up the Heat".CFD Review.July 16, 2007.[unreliable source?]
- ^Larry Gould."The Trends In CFD Are Continuous, Dynamic, And Real".Automotive Design and Production. Archived fromthe originalon 2009-09-27.Retrieved2009-10-15.
- ^Simulation environments ease CFD analysis,Engineering Talk, July 9, 2007
- ^AutomotiveWorld."Simulation software for fuel cell development".RetrievedOctober 1,2009.
- ^"CD-adapco Releases STAR-CCM+ Box Set".CFD Review. October 18, 2005.
- ^abFranco Brezzi and Konstantin Lipnikov and Mikhail Shashkov,New Discretization Methodology for Diffusion Problems on Polyhedral Meshes(PDF),archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2009-08-13,retrieved2009-10-15
- ^ab"Products, April 2007".Desktop Engineering Magazine. April 2007. Archived fromthe originalon August 30, 2010.RetrievedOctober 15,2009.
- ^Software, Siemens Product Lifecycle Management."Siemens to Acquire Simulation Software Supplier CD-adapco: Siemens PLM Software".plm.automation.siemens.Archived fromthe originalon 2017-12-23.Retrieved2017-10-05.
External links
[edit]- CD-adapco company websiteArchived2009-09-16 at theWayback Machine