Gliders by Design vs Pixel Wind Tunnel

Harness the incredible power of your iPad or MacOS desktop computer. Design impressive handheld gliders that you can easily put together. Create whole squadrons of your very own designs that you can make soar! Have a contest to see who can design and build the best glider. All you need is our software, along with your iPad, scissors, a metric ruler, card stock and/or balsa wood, a little clay, and a bottle of super glue (for card stock gliders) or a hot glue gun (for balsa wood gliders). This software is a true designing application that includes authentic glider analyses and predictions. It requires a bit more effort to design and build your own gliders to fly instead of just watching simulations, or using prebuilt designs, but the payoff can be well worth it. By building your own gliders you will quickly learn much more about flight, while likely feeling far more empowered and satisfied seeing your designs glide off into the distance. The software is already a great success at many schools (students 11 years old and up).

Draw a shape. Tap Simulate. Watch real fluid physics come alive in pixels. Pixel Wind Tunnel runs real CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) right on your device, in 2D or 3D. It uses the lattice Boltzmann method with a turbulence (LES) model, so it stays stable even at very high Reynolds numbers. FOUR SIMULATIONS • Single-phase flow: the classic wind tunnel. Wakes, vortex shedding, drag and lift. • Two-phase flow: a liquid layer flows under air. Set the interface height, the density and the viscosity of each phase (water and air by default) and watch waves and overflow around your shape. • Combustion: draw fuel nozzles in any direction. The fuel jets mix with the air and burn as flames. • Heat transfer: draw hot and cold shapes, set their temperatures in kelvin and watch warm air rise and cold air sink. HOW IT WORKS 1. Pick a simulation on the home screen 2. Draw any shape with your finger: airfoils, cars, buildings, anything 3. Tap Simulate and watch the flow develop SEE IT IN 3D Every mode can extrude your drawing in depth. Drag to orbit, move the view with two fingers, set the model width (half or full) and see 3D streamlines, flames, liquid surfaces and hot and cold air from any angle. SEE THE FLOW • Velocity, pressure, vorticity and turbulence • Temperature, flames, fuel and liquid fraction • Streamlines in every view MEASURE PERFORMANCE • Drag coefficient (Cd), lift coefficient (Cl) and Reynolds number • Point probes that track the flow over time • A timeline to scrub through the whole run DRAWING TOOLS Brush with adjustable size, pen, straight lines with X/Y lock, eraser, fuel nozzles and pinch-to-zoom. Save shapes and reload them anytime. FOR CURIOUS MINDS Whether you are a student of fluid mechanics, an engineer sketching ideas, a teacher demonstrating aerodynamics or heat transfer, or simply curious why things are shaped the way they are: draw it and find out.