Wind power is hot now, but what are its weather-pattern ramifications?

Using smoke, laser light, model airplane propellers, and a campus wind tunnel, a team of researchers is trying to solve the airflow mysteries that surround wind turbines.

Although wind turbines are becoming increasingly popular as a power source, important questions remain. Could large wind farms that whip up the air with massive whirling blades alter local weather conditions? Could even more efficient power be wrested from the turbines by changing the way they're arranged across a farm?

Researchers from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., hope their work will help answer such questions.

"There's been a lot of research done on wind turbine blade aerodynamics, but few people have looked at the way these machines interact with the turbulent wind conditions around them," said Charles Meneveau, a Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering professor who leads the research team.

Researchers study airflow around scale models of wind turbines like these to determine how to best situate their larger cousins to avoid changing weather patterns or affecting temperature.

By studying the airflow around small, scale-model windmills, the researchers aim to develop computer models that can tell them about the atmosphere at full-size wind farms.

To collect data for such models, Meneveau's team is conducting experiments in a campus wind tunnel.

The tunnel uses a large fan to generate a stream of air moving at about 40 mph. Before it enters the testing area, the air passes through a curtain of perforated plates that rotate randomly and create turbulence so that air currents in the tunnel more closely resemble real-life wind conditions. The air currents then pass through a series of small model-airplane propellers mounted atop posts, mimicking an array of full-size wind turbines, Meneveau said.

The researchers gather information on the interaction of the air currents and the model turbines by using a procedure called stereo particle-image velocimetry.

First, they seed the air in the tunnel with tiny particles that move with the prevailing airflow. Above the model turbines, a laser generates two sheet-like pulses of light in quick succession. A camera captures the position of particles at the time of each flash.

"When the images are processed, we see that there are two dots for every particle," Meneveau said. "Because we know the time difference between the two laser shots, we can calculate the velocity. So we get an instant snapshot of the velocity vector at each point.

With vector maps in hand, researchers can calculate the kinetic energy flowing from one place to another in much greater detail than possible before, he added.

Raul Cal, a Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow who also works on the project, said the data could lead to a better understanding of real wind farm conditions.

"What happens when you put these wind turbines too close together or too far apart? What if you align them staggered or in parallel?" he asked. "All of these are different effects that we want to be able to comprehend and quantify, rather than just go out there and build these massive structures, implementing them and not knowing what's going to happen."

Dense clusters of wind turbines could also affect nearby temperatures and humidity levels, and cumulatively, perhaps, alter local weather conditions.

Computer models like the researchers' could help unravel the various effects involved.

To help get European freight traffic off already congested roads and cut attendant air pollution, a Czech company has spearheaded development of software that helps haulers manage the movement of goods via rail.

The agencies involved say their digital rail map may get freight haulers back to considering rail by making it easier to plan potential routes.

The digital rail map could take the place of the wall rail map commonly used by haulers and railway officials to plan the movement of freight, according to Petr Kroca of Jerid, the company that helped develop the software. Jerid worked with Eureka, a European agency that supports industrial research and development.

Kroca pointed out that a map on the wall is limited in the detail it can represent and, although it can be replaced, it cannot be updated. "Hence the information may not be a correct reflection of the reality on the ground," Kroca said.

The software, E-Railmap, is essentially an electronic map of the European railway network. It collects information on train positions by using conventional methods of railway data gathering coupled with telematics technologies.

Maps can be displayed in desktop and Internet computer applications. Once logged in, users can access a list of detailed information about train positions and a history of movements. They can also use the system as a data management tool, exporting and importing information to and from data files. The software allows users to send messages to rail units.

More than 200 users in 12 European countries now use the software.

Design your house in bold colors, drop it down in your neighborhood, then look for it online using a combination of three-dimensional and mapping technology.

Mechanical engineers know Dassault Systèmes of Paris as a computer-aided engineering company, but Microsoft Virtual Earth users are turning to a Dassault program to design realistic houses and structures that can be placed within 3-D maps.

Virtual Earth online mapping service uses Dassault's 3-D capabilities to depict buildings in three dimensions and make them look realistic.

The Virtual Earth online mapping and search services give users a bird's-eye view of the world, including three-dimensional images and aerial and satellite imagery, according to Stephen Lawler, general manager of Virtual Earth in Redmond, Wash.

Now those 3-D images can be created and shared using the recently released Virtual Earth 3DVIA from Dassault.

With the merged application, users can design a 3-D model of a house, building, or structure, then select from different visualization options, textures, and colors to give their 3-D models a realistic appearance. Next, they upload their 3-D models to Virtual Earth, specifying an address or neighborhood to give the model a real-life context, said Lynne Wilson, senior vice president and general manager of 3DVIA at Dassault.

They also can share the models through Web communities.

Global collaborative design is already well entrenched within manufacturing and other sectors, according to a recent report from research firm Aberdeen Group of Boston. Many companies who use the method find that it saves money.

The group's report, Profitable Design Chains: Global Product Design Comes of Age, finds that global design is a manufacturing and engineering reality today. It defines global design as the strategy of designing products via a linked network of companies and individuals. And companies are coming to depend on it more and more as technology advances.

"Organizations are turning to a global workforce to not only reduce costs, but also accelerate product innovation," the report said.

Companies that use the design strategy are 52 percent more likely to meet product launch target dates and 28 percent more likely to meet product development cost targets than industry-average companies, the report said.

It goes on to offer recommendations on how to best take advantage of the strategy.

Suggestions include coordinating the design chain through project management and review, centralizing product design data to standardize and automate product development, and bringing in software that protects intellectual property but still allows for collaboration.

Protecting intellectual property continues to be the number one challenge with global design. Product lifecycle management and related technologies help with this, while letting companies collaborate and manage engineering processes across dispersed teams, the report finds.

"Initially, many companies pursuing global design sacrificed strategic needs, such as protecting intellectual property, in favor of addressing some of the more pressing, operational challenges," said Jim Brown, vice president of product innovation and en- gineering research at Aberdeen. "Companies are now starting to address both the strategic and operational challenges as a part of a more evolved approach to global design."

The more things change, the greater the need for software that can keep pace.

Apic Yamada Corp. of Nagano, Japan, which makes production machinery for the semiconductor industry, recently standardized on one CAD system to help meet frequent part design and specification changes.

The company's production equipment must accommodate frequent change requests from customers, according to Yoshinari Hosaka, senior engineer for Apic's system and technology management group.

His company allows any team member to pick up and change any part of a design at any time. This speeds up the design cycle, but makes for many changes to design, Hosaka said. Apic figured that a common CAD system, which allows for quick changes and for tracking those changes, could help.

For CAD design, the company now uses OneSpace Modeling from CoCreate Software Inc. of Fort Collins, Colo.

The product lifecycle manufacturing sector continues to grow as more customers recognize its business value, according to a recent report from CIMdata, the technology research firm in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In 2006, the market grew by 10.7 percent to reach $20.1 billion, said Ken Amann, CIMdata's director of research.

He expects PLM investments to continue their climb over the next five years and to exceed $30 billion by 2011. Those numbers were reported late last year in CIMdata's annual PLM Analysis Report. The 2007 report presented an analysis of 2006 global numbers.

According to CIMdata, companies spent $13.2 billion in 2006 on related PLM applications such as CAD, computed-aided manufacturing, electronic design automation, engineering simulation and analysis, and technical publishing tools.

While automotive and high-tech companies are big PLM adopters, the aerospace and defense and the fab- rication and assembly sectors also showed high adoption numbers. PLM growth also included consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, petrochemical and shipbuilding companies, and utilities.

"This across-the-board growth demonstrates the universality of PLM in providing business value across such a diverse spectrum of industries," Amann said.

By finding flaws early in a potential design, finite element analysis software can help a company's engineers get to the end product faster.

That's one reason executives at Empirical Systems Aerospace of Oceano, Calif., said they're turning to finite element analysis for their military, commercial, and private aircraft.

ESAero provides analysis, prototyping, testing, and large-scale model services for everything from conceptual aerospace designs to aircraft that require certification. Clients include Boeing Phantomworks, NASA, and Southwest Aero Group.

Using the FEA programs FEMAP, NEiNastran, and NEiWorks, all from Noran Engineering of Westminster, Calif., lets ESAero's engineers iterate designs and structurally analyze aerospace components and configurations. The company has integrated its Solidworks CAD package with the FEA software, said Andrew Gibson, vice president of business development at ESAero.

Technodigit of Lyon, France, has upgraded its 3DReshaper to version five. The software is used for three-dimensional modeling, reverse engineering, and surface reconstruction.

Ideal.com of Rockville, Md., has released its ScanCentral line of color scan, copy, and print systems. They're available in three models to suit a range of user needs.

A maker of CAD interoperability software, TransMagic Inc. of Westminster, Colo., is now shipping TransMagic release 7 SP1, which provides support for Catia version 5, release 17, Parasolid 19, Autodesk Inventor 2008, and NX 5. The software allows the reuse of CAD designs in multi-CAD environments.

Dassault Systèmes of Paris and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., are collaborating toward a digital product rights management solution. When completed, it will offer data protection for designers that share 3-D designs with suppliers and partners outside their organization.

AutoForm Engineering GmbH of Zurich, Switzerland, has released AutoForm-OneStep for Catia version 5. The new module is a toolkit for sheet metal product designers. It allows them to make manufacturability assessments within Catia.

A maker of 3-D CAD systems, think3 of Cincinnati, has released thinkreshape, a reverse engineering and deviation-control application that allows users to rebuild the mathematics of a physical object.

A company that produces 3-D distribution software, myVR Software AS of Oslo, Norway, is now shipping version two of its myVR Viewer and myVR publisher for interactive streaming of large 3-D models across any network.

Infolytica Corp. of Montreal has upgraded MagNet 2D and MagNet 3D. These are low-frequency electromagnetic field simulation applications. Updated features improve the accuracy of the simulation results, according to the developer.

Geomagic of Research Triangle Park, N.C., is shipping the latest version of its digital reconstruction software, Geomagic Studio 10.

ESI Group of Paris, a supplier of simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing, is now included in the Dassault Systèmes' PLM MarketPlace. The online community allows users to find applications provided by the Dassault Systèmes software partner community.

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