At the end of last week, we at Volupe hosted what has now arguably been established as an October tradition – the fifth annual Simcenter User Conference. This year we had the pleasure of welcoming both returning as well as some first-time visitors, all of whom contributed to the great atmosphere and conversations held during the two days. In this week’s blog post we will summarize the event and the presentations that were given.
AFRY – Real-time dynamic HVAC control using CAE assisted AI
Anthony Vivek kicked off the user presentations with an interesting work performed at AFRY for improving HVAC control with CAE assisted AI. The concept aims to improve energy and cost efficiency for current HVAC systems by incorporating CFD predictions of entire flow and temperature fields, in addition to regular single point sensors. In order to get CFD responses within a feasible time-frame for the control system, the concept implemented Reduced Order Models (ROMs) and AI to predict flow and temperature fields based on previous CFD studies. The study showed potential energy savings of around 20-30%, with cost reductions reaching up to 50%.
Flocean – The Future of Fresh Water is Subsea
Henrik Alfredsson from Flocean gave an interesting look into the billion dollar business of water desalination. Conventional desalination of seawater is done onshore in extensive plants, with high energy and land space demands. The high energy demand originates from the reverse osmosis process used to separate the salts from the water, which requires substantial gauge pressures. In addition, the water extraction from relatively shallow and near shore locations poses a challenge with contaminants (algaes, garbage residue etc.) that must be filtered out, and the rest product from the desalination that is fed back to the ocean adds an additional environmental footprint. The disrupting technology from Flocean utilizes the ambient deep-sea pressure to accomplish the reverse osmosis, substantially reducing the energy need. Henrik demonstrated how they have successfully made use of several Simcenter products such as Flomaster, Simsolid, Optistruct, STAR-CCM+ and HEEDS in the development process.
Pascal Technologies – Air lubricated vessels.
Anastasia Zubova from Pascal Technologies continued the day by showing how air lubrication could be used for improving the hydrodynamics for boats, reducing the energy need by up to 30-50%. The concept aims to be an enabler for the electrification of the maritime industry. Anastasia spoke about the challenges with wave and vessel dynamics and how to take all degrees of freedom into account. An interesting insight into trying to reproduce real tests and sea conditions with CFD in Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
Heraeus Covantics – Quartz glass downdraw extrusion and melting reflow
Boris Gromann from Heraeus Covantics presented the simulation work they have done in the realm of highly viscous fluids within quartz glass production. The presentation showed how they managed to successfully use the viscous flow model in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to properly capture the downdraw extrusion process of quartz glass. Boris also demonstrated how they finally had managed to utilize STAR-CCM+ (and particularly the VOF model) to replicate quartz glass melting “reflow” – something they had struggled with for several years.
Donnie Lygonis – Constant innovation
This year’s keynote speaker was Donnie Lygonis from Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH) in Stockholm. In an energetic and inspiring session, he talked about the innovation paradox, implying that innovation requires risk taking, while organizations typically make it rational not to take risks. In his talk, he encouraged open-mindedness and thinking outside the box, and also called upon leaders and organizations to not ask people to be braver – but rather making it easier to try.
Volupe – The eXes
Carl Wanngård and Lukas Johansson from Volupe gave an overview of the new cloud-based licensing type Simcenter X and the HPC solution Volupe X. If you’re interested in knowing more about either of these products, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your sales representative or info@volupe.com.
Siemens – STAR-CCM+ Meshing roadmap
Konstantinos Karamolegkos gave a walkthrough of what’s to come in terms of meshing capabilities in the future releases of Simcenter STAR-CCM+. Due to confidentiality we are not able to share more about this in this blog post.
Erik Olkiewicz – Hypnosis show
To end the first day, we had invited Erik Olkiewicz to perform a hypnosis show. During the last hour he shared the stage with some brave participants from the audience who took part of the hypnosis show. An interesting ending to day one for sure, with a lot of laughs filling the room on several occasions.
Volvo Car Corporation – Transient Cabin Simulations
Emil Willeson addressed the topic of thermal efficiency and presented the work that he and his colleagues had performed on transient cabin simulations for predicting cabin temperature distribution alongside energy consumption. Emil talked about the challenges of full vehicle simulations, typically containing thousands of components, interfaces and hundreds of different materials. He then presented their in-house developed script-based strategy for addressing this otherwise labor-intensive work of preparing the full vehicle CAD for simulation.
FS Dynamics – Extreme waves and loads on offshore structures
Erik Bjerle showcased their work on predicting loads and slamming forces on offshore structures and platforms during heavy seas using Simcenter STAR-CCM+, an important engineering area to keep offshore work safe. Erik talked about wave simulation and how to replicate wave forms with numerical methods. Using test basins as reference, they had managed to closely replicate certain conditions using CFD – along with resolving the forces onto the offshore structures.
Siemens – Simcenter Roadmap
Similar to previous years, Karin Fröjd took the stage to present the roadmap for the Simcenter portfolio. This time she was also accompanied by Nadine Kåmark who has joined the product management team since the Altair acquisition. Similar to the STAR-CCM+ meshing roadmap, the general Simcenter roadmap essentially contains confidential material on what’s to come and is intended solely for the eyes and ears of the conference participants, why we will not share more information on this topic. Make sure to sign up for next year’s conference to stay up to date with the latest advancements!
Casappa – Advanced modelling of lubricated gaps in positive displacement machines
Our last presenter was Alessandro Corvaglia from Casappa, all the way from Parma, Italy. He talked about the challenge with lubrication losses in hydraulic pumps and the efforts to minimize them using simulation insights from Simcenter Amesim (and other CAE tools). A thorough work and an impressive display on how CAE can be used to tackle difficult engineering problems and improve mechanical efficiency.
Concluding remarks
The 2026 edition of the Simcenter User Conference once again managed to gather and hopefully enthuse the great simulation community we are proud to be a part of. A great mix of technical deep dives, inspiring and thought-provoking sessions, great food and great conversations. A huge thanks to all our presenters and participants. We hope to see you again next year!
Author
Johan Bernander, M.Sc.
