Encyclopaedia Index

CHAM'S ACTIVITIES 1995-1996

M.R.Malin, CHAM, London, UK

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. General activities
  3. Consultancy activities
  4. Collaborative projects
  5. Development activities
  6. Future activities

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this talk is to provide a brief overview of CHAM and its activities during 1995 and the forthcoming year.

Concentration Heat and Momentum Ltd (CHAM), has its head-office in Wimbledon, officies in the USA and Japan, and an international network of Agents and Distributors.

The Wimbledon office currently has 35 staff, of which approximately 60% are involved in technical activities such as research, consultancy, development, user support and installations.

CHAM is currently organised into 4 divisions: Adminstration, Technical, Special-Product Development, and User Support.

CHAM's policy is now to sell actively through its Agents and Distributors and to focus on product development, engineering consultancy and product support in Wimbledon.

GENERAL ACTIVITIES

CHAM Japan, which was established in July 1994, enjoyed a very successful year in selling PHOENICS and related consultancy and support services in the Far East.

CHAM participated in many courses, seminars and conferences, including:

CONSULTANCY ACTIVITIES

This year has seen a large increase in the number of consultancy activities. For example, contracts were undertaken and completed in respect of:

Several projects were performed at 50% discount to the Client, on the condition that any new features were coded as generally-available options in PHOENICS. Spin-offs from such projects included:

COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS

The collaborative ESPRIT project concerned with the creation of PHOENICS- CVD was recently completed. The partners were: ASM, CHAM, Fraunhofer, SIEMANS and TU Delft.

PHOENICS-CVD is an industry-specific product which simulates Chemical- Vapour-Deposition (CVD) processes, which involve: - laminar flow of multicomponent gas, with diffusion processes due to concentration and thermal gradients; - gas-phase and surface chemical reactions; - convective, diffusive and radiative heat transfer, and conjugate heat transfer between solids and gases; and - plasma-enhanced chemical reactions.

PHOENICS-CVD can now be purchased as a stand-alone package, or as an add-on to an existing PHOENICS installation.

CHAM, in collaboration with COLT VR Ltd, has developed a virtual-reality interface to PHOENICS. There is a "generic" PHOENICS-VR interface, and there are special-purpose versions designed for specific industries.

The VR interface enables users to set up flow-simulation tasks for PHOENICS in 'real-life terms', placing walls, fans, apertures, etc where they want them, and seeing them appear on the screen in a life-like manner.

The first release of PHOENICS-VR is now available for PCs or as an Internet linked service.

During 1995, the European ESPRIT III and PASHA projects concerned with the creation of Parallel-PHOENICS were completed.

Parallel-PHOENICS has recently been benchmarked to provide end-users with information on its performance, and several users have taken delivery of a version with basic PHOENICS functionality.

DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES

PHOENICS Development activities, which will be covered in more detail in a separate lecture, have included the provision of several new features and improvements to many existing ones.

New features include:

Improvements have been made in a number of areas, including:

Improvements have also been made, and continue to be made to:

FUTURE ACTIVITIES

For PHOENICS 2.2, work is currently in progress on several fronts, including:

During 1996, CHAM and its European partners will be engaged on the collaborative MICANET project.

MICANET is concerned with the creation of several Expert HPCN Application Centres, initially for industrial-furnace and hazard-analysis simulations.

It involves: the use of VR interfaces for problem definition in industry- specific terms; the use of parallel computers for CFD simulation; and VR for viewing the results of the simulations.

Future PHOENICS developments are manifold, and include: