Release

PreonLab 5.0 Released

Adaptive resolution refines or coarsens particles on the fly as they enter or leave regions of interest. This feature was first introduced in PreonLab 4.1, but PreonLab 5.0 takes it to the next level. Firstly, a new refinement level allows for more adaptivity and greater particle reduction. Secondly, the new continuous refinement strategy enables more precise refinement near the regions of interest, improving the performance but also the reliability of the simulation. Thirdly, the overall efficiency of the system has been improved to reduce the overhead of coarsening and refinement on the run time. Combined, these changes can accelerate some applications by up to an order of magnitude. You can read more about adaptive resolution in PreonLab 5.0 here.

Solver efficiency is not the only factor contributing to the total turnaround time. Pre- and post-processing effort can be a bottleneck and in many cases require more time than the simulation itself. This is why the graphical user interface is a crucial (and sometimes neglected) part of any CFD software. We are proud that PreonLab has often been praised for providing an efficient and enjoyable working environment for CFD engineers. With PreonLab 5.0 we are continuing this tradition.

The entire graphical user interface has been updated for improved visibility and ease of use. You can now also choose between a dark and a light mode according to your personal preference. Furthermore, we analyzed bottlenecks when working with massive setups with thousands of geometries and added object hierachies for a smoother workflow. Finally, we redesigned the plot dialog completely so that you get the most out of your simulation results. PreonLab 5.0 lets you focus on what matters and is more fun to use than ever before.

This release greatly expands the thermodynamics capabilities of PreonLab. For the first time, it is now possible to analyze the heat distribution within solids using the new conjugate heat transfer feature. Furthermore, we added wall functions that provide more accuracy even for coarser simulation resolutions. Both features are fresh from the (hot) oven and are currently marked as experimental. We are looking forward to pushing this topic further in the near future.

Winter might be over but in PreonLab the snow is falling all year. We, at FIFTY2, are happy to see the rise in applications the snow solver is resolving. This has motivated us to update the snow solver for PreonLab 5.0 improving its versatility and performance even further. We have made this possible by drastically decreasing the required iterations by up to a factor of 2. Let it snow!

Check out the changelog for a full list of changes. To learn more about the new features, have a look at the updated manual. We hope you will enjoy working with PreonLab 5.0 and as always, we would appreciate your feedback.