We talked to Richard to find out a bit more about the man behind the mesher. 

How did you become involved in simulation?
I started straight out of the University of Manchester, beginning in the loads and dynamics department at BAE Systems.  I used simple NASTRAN models and aero calcs to predict flutter on the Airbus A340.  I then moved to GEC, where I was involved in the Towed Decoy on the Eurofighter project.  After that, I worked on the Brimstone missile project for the Harrier and Tornado.  From there it was to Rover/BMW, where I helped introduce CFD, working on the external aerodynamics of 4x4 vehicles.  My final stop before Sharc was with Boeing in Seattle, where I did flutter calcs on the Boeing 737 NG (Next Generation).

What was your impetus for starting Sharc?
CFD and meshing were very tedious processes at the time, and Mark and I thought we could help customers achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness.  It was a bit of a gamble borne out of frustration about the way things were being done.  We knew we had a good opportunity in being able to sell EnSight, and the goal was always to develop a better mesher.

How did you and Mark get together?
Mark was a year ahead of me at the University of Manchester, but I didn’t know him then.  We met at Rover and soon after we met Johannes Grawe of Genias, CEI’s German distributor.  Johannes introduced us to EnSight, which we recognized immediately as the best visualization solution.  That meeting got us thinking about starting our own business.

Why did you develop Harpoon?
We decided to write Harpoon because there was no mesher available that would always produce a good mesh.  It was a long process to produce a mesh and at the end of it, you sometimes didn’t get a useable result.  The only people who could produce good meshes were experts, and even they failed too often.  Harpoon helps non-experts create high-quality, reliable meshes in minutes with little or no effort.

Who is using Harpoon and for what types of applications?
Customers are using Harpoon in a variety of ways – to design inkjet printers, tooth implants, Formula 1 cars, boilers, mixers, America’s Cup yachts, and drug delivery systems, just to name a few.  Automotive companies are major customers, using Harpoon to mesh water jackets, power trains, HVAC systems, and the outer shells of cars for aerodynamic studies.  The meshes are imported directly into popular solvers, then into EnSight for visualization.

In your opinion, what is the biggest area of progress in simulation over the last five years or so?
Automation and ease of use have made CFD more accessible to non-experts.  It’s much easier now to do aerodynamic studies and visualize the results using EnSight.

What do you see as the important developments ahead in the next five years?
I think there will be progress on many fronts at the same time, enabled by grid computing and parallelization and continued automation of meshing, solver and visualization software. It is going to get to the point where you won’t have to worry about creating high-quality meshes.  You won’t have to think about setting up a problem for a CFD or FEA solver; they will be one and the same.  There will be a convergence that will mean a lot less effort for users to obtain meaningful results.

Do you have any interesting or funny anecdotes from your experience in the simulation business?
One of the most bizarre negotiations I’ve ever seen was the head of CFD for a Formula 1 team arm-wrestling a sales person from a leading solver vendor for additional licenses.  The Formula 1 engineer won, much to the dismay of the sales person.

What do you do when you’re not working?
I play a little tennis, and would do more sailing if I had the time.  I like music, everything from jazz (Stan Getz) to classical to Avril Lavigne type stuff.

Anything you would like to say to your colleagues in the simulation world?
Don’t just follow what others have done for years.  Try something new – you never know where it might take you!

###


The Sharc gang pauses for some fun in Orlando.  Richard Bardwell is in the middle, flanked by Mark Gallagher (left) and Paul Gilfrin, Sharc’s account manager.

Richard Bardwell’s company, Sharc, has made a major contribution to CFD automation with the Harpoon extreme mesher, which enables non-experts to reduce the time it takes to generate a high-quality mesh from days to minutes.  This image shows a Harpoon mesh on the surface of a Boeing F-18C aicraft. 6.5 million total cells, 4.6 million hexas, 239k prisms, 942k pyramids, 689k tets, and approximately ~8 minutes to mesh.