Odd request for locals

[Doc B.]

Does anyone have a Microsoft Surface Pro 1, 2 or 3 with 128G that I could borrow for a bit? I am trying to set up a Microsoft Kinect for some 3D scanning and with all the puters we have around here I don't have anything here with the right kind of USB3.0 port to be able to talk to it. Just need to borrow it for a weekend to make some scans of my landspeed bike so I can run a CFD analysis on it - or maybe I can trade something for one...

[Doc B.]

Woot, got it working with my Lenovo. Never mind.

[OverAnalyst]

You running a CFD analysis on your bike?? Sweet, and curious, what software do/did you use?

[Doc B.]

I'm still getting it together, many distractions this summer. The Kinect is pretty good on tabletop size stuff but not useful for this larger object, and I'm willing to sell it cheap if anyone wants it. I will be using photogrammetry with a DSLR to model the bike instead. I have been trying it out with Meshroom and Blender and a fairly well beefed up workstation. I got a pretty decent test model of the motor that way. For the CFD itself it seems like the free SimScale subscription is worth trying.

Lots of little details to work out to get a decent result. Reflection of smooth surfaces is a big problem. My bike has a lot of shiny. The first trial will be done with spray talc on the reflective surfaces to see if that allows the software to see without getting confused. Then I have to figure out how to scan me in my gear.

[OverAnalyst]

I take it your scanning it for the sake of time rather than modeling it up (i.e. having to find a CAD software and then learning how to model/assemble it up). And I would imagine with all the detail picked up from the scanner, that you'll get a pretty large model to analyze.

Nonetheless, never thought the president of a hi-fi audio company is doing CFD analysis on the side as a hobby on something unrelated to audio. People do that for a living!    Anyhow, cool stuff.

[Doc B.]

I race a land speed motorcycle as my hobby. Wind tunnel and dyno time are both very useful - and very expensive. Any way around blowing the race budget on them is worth looking into. When I last studied CFD it was restricted to the realm of Cray supercomputers, black magic stuff monopolized by government think tanks in the late 70s. Now you can upload your simulation to a cloud based setup like SimScale and have results in a few hours. So it seems worth giving it a shot. Learning to model the bike accurately from scratch would take more time than I have and my first whack at photogrammetry of my motor was pretty encouraging - screenshot attached. I'll just keep chipping away at the project and maybe get through through the whole process, or maybe not.

[OverAnalyst]

Just throwing this idea out (as I always like to bounce ideas around) in case you haven't considered it. But I see this being a great senior design project for a mechanical engineer at your nearby university. Give him/her the opportunity to work on a cool project (using college provided software). And you get some results for free! Or perhaps compare your results with theirs. Of course, easier said than done. Anyhow, good luck!

[Doc B.]

A good idea. Nearest university is across the Sound but maybe someone would be willing.