When you gaze upon the beauty of a car’s curves, how often do you think about people who worked for you to be able to enjoy this view? Let’s not forget that designers are working hand in hand with engineers: these cars, despite their eye-catching look, have to satisfy the manufacturability, a low aerodynamic drag, structural robustness, etc.

Many of Honda cars are designed in the Honda Automobile Research & Development Center  located in Tochigi, Japan. This facility houses state-of-the-art research equipments: a car-to-car crash test, a proving ground (with a road of Belgian brick!), wind tunnels, etc.

But prior to all these physical tests, Honda Engineers perform and analyze CFD computations on external aerodynamics of the car body, as well as aero-thermal computations of the underhood: radiator fans, flow around engine bay/peripherals, exhaust system, etc.

All these computations require a high level of accuracy from the software used and a fast turnaround time. The product has to be mature and robust enough to meet industrial expectations.

“We massively invested in NUMECA solutions more than 2 years ago, and are very satisfied with the level of precision they provide us.“, says Dr.Takiguchi, 11 Development division, Chief Engineer at Honda Automobile R&D Center. “We previously used various other commercial meshing tools, but were not satisfied by the quality of the viscous layers which many times led to divergence.

Moreover, the learning curve was cumbersome. When we switched to OMNIS™/Hexpress, we not only solved these issues, but also divided by 3 our CPU time, while the engineering time dropped to 30 mins/mesh.

Thanks to OMNIS™/Hexpress' speed, the reduced turnaround time allows my team to explore more designs in a shorter amount of time. This tool is easy to get started with; my engineers are quickly able to deliver results.

The complexity of our geometries forces us to be very demanding regarding our CFD tools. We needed a mesher capable of easily handling unclean CAD with overlapping surfaces, holes, intersecting selections, etc. OMNIS™/Hexpress appeared to us as the perfect solution for this job.

We also greatly appreciate its Thin-Wall feature, allowing us to get a conformal interface between 2 different domains such as a pipe and the fluid inside of it. The level of details we can now capture is impressive, and improves the accuracy of our results and thus our products.

Overview of the mesh engine’s complexity

Contra-rotating radiator fans

Furthermore, the service and technical support provided by NUMECA Japan meet our highest professional expectations. NUMECA experts interacted closely with us to understand our specific needs and proposed dedicated solutions, all the way from support to custom developments."

Mesh without the car body