Introducing nTop Fluids

Learn about the latest release of nTop, including new Lattice Boltzmann CFD capabilities for rapid fluids simulations.

Today, we're thrilled to announce the launch of nTop Fluids, our new computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution that eliminates the traditional bottlenecks of simulation and empowers engineers to iterate on designs with unprecedented speed and efficiency.

Following our acquisition of cloudfluid earlier this year, we've integrated their native GPU CFD technology with our industry-leading implicit modeling kernel to deliver a solution that's 100-1000x faster than conventional CPU-based solvers. This breakthrough enables engineers to bring CFD directly into the iterative design loop, fundamentally changing how high-performance products are developed.

The Challenge: Traditional CFD Limitations

Traditional CFD solvers represent a remarkable convergence of engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science, enabling the accurate prediction of complex physical systems with unprecedented accuracy. And they have long been an essential tool for engineers across industries to predict fluid behavior, from flow through manifolds to heat flux within heat exchangers and lift and drag of complex aerodynamic systems. However, traditional CFD still has some fundamental limitations that have prevented it from enabling a faster, more iterative design process:

• Specialized expertise needed to create high-quality body-fitted meshes
• Model preparation and meshing requires expertise and often takes days or weeks
• Solving complex partial differential equations require significant computational resources
• Lengthy solve times that are not conducive to a highly iterative design process

These constraints have forced teams to choose between limiting design exploration due to long simulation cycles — risking suboptimal designs — or extending development timelines to pursue better performance.

Generate and Evaluate Design Iterations at Scale

nTop Fluids leverages the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) to solve fluid dynamics problems with remarkable efficiency, overcoming the fundamental limitations of traditional CFD approaches that have long frustrated engineering teams.

Iterate Faster with In-the-Loop CFD

Our solver runs 100-1000x faster than conventional CPU-based approaches while providing direct integration with nTop that allows you to setup and run CFD analysis directly on your computational model. This breakthrough delivers feedback orders of magnitude faster, enabling you to make design changes, automatically analyze every new iteration, and see results in minutes rather than days or weeks, and fundamentally changing how you approach optimization.

Eliminate the Model Prep Bottleneck

nTop Fluids works seamlessly with the implicit geometry created in nTop without translation, automatically generating simpler voxel meshes that eliminate the need for meticulously crafted body-fitted meshes. This simplified workflow reduces the steps from design to simulation results, removing the expertise barriers that have traditionally limited CFD access to specialized analysts.

Accelerate AI/ML Applications

In addition to faster iteration, the rapid CFD capabilities now in nTop bring down the computational cost and manual effort required to create large geometry and physics datasets for training machine learning models, enabling an inverse design approach. This capability supports parametric design exploration, allowing you to systematically investigate design spaces to find optimal solutions while building the foundation for intelligent automation of your design process.

"nTop Fluids is a valuable addition to our arsenal of CAE simulation engines, helping us bring real-world multiphysics ML and optimization workflows to the aerospace and industrial manufacturing industries."

Alexander Lavin

Founder & CEO, an industry leader in differentiable physics and AI-native digital engineering

Pasteur Labs

Proven Accuracy: Rigorous Validation Against Industry Standards

The accuracy and reliability of nTop Fluids have been rigorously validated through comprehensive benchmarking studies comparing our Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) solver against trusted industry-leading CFD solutions. Our validation study examined five critical test cases spanning external aerodynamics, internal flows, and biomedical applications.

Validated Across Multiple Applications: From flow over spheres at various Reynolds numbers to high-lift airfoil analysis, nTop Fluids consistently matched or exceeded the accuracy of established CFD tools. Drag coefficient calculations showed excellent agreement with ANSYS Fluent and standard correlations, with errors of less than two percent across four orders of magnitude in Reynolds number testing.

Exceptional Performance in Complex Flows: Testing on challenging cases like the Volvo flame holder and FDA nozzle benchmark revealed nTop's ability to accurately capture transitional flow dynamics, vortex shedding, and recirculation zones. In the FDA nozzle study, nTop showed excellent agreement with experimental Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) data, particularly excelling in throat region velocity predictions where traditional solvers struggled to achieve 95% confidence intervals.

These validation studies confirm that nTop Fluids delivers the accuracy engineers demand while providing the unprecedented speed advantages of a GPU-accelerated LBM solver.

To learn more about the comparison benchmark, download the whitepaper.

Real-World Impact: Customer Success Stories

Customers with early access to nTop Fluids and those that previously used the cloudfluid technology have shared the impact of rapid CFD in their development processes:

"The new CFD capabilities in nTop eliminate our bottleneck with simulation. Being able to run analysis directly on the model without needing a mesh has transformed how quickly we can evaluate designs. This approach to CFD demonstrates nTop's ability to address real engineering challenges with computational design."

Markus Lempke

Computational Design Engineer for Additive Manufacturing

Siemens Energy

"Working directly with implicit models for CFD analysis enables us to explore design iterations at unprecedented speed. nTop continues to solve real engineering problems by integrating the tools we need in one cohesive platform."

Aleksansdr Souk

Research Development Mechanical Engineer

NASA Goddard

Launch Capabilities and Future Roadmap

nTop Fluids natively simulates low-to-moderate turbulence via Large Eddy Simulation (LES), making it especially valuable for predicting complex flows that may transition between laminar and turbulent regimes. The initial release of nTop Fluids focuses on incompressible internal flow applications, making it ideal for predicting flow and pressure drop in:

• Heat exchangers and thermal management systems
• Manifolds and complex flow paths
• Valves and control systems
• Turbomachinery components

Our development roadmap includes upcoming releases that will expand capabilities to include:

• Conjugate heat transfer (CHT) for comprehensive thermal analysis
• Enhanced post-processing and visualization tools

Get started with nTop Fluids

To learn more about the new CFD capabilities in nTop, reach out to our team or join us at our upcoming webinar highlighting everything in the latest release at the links below.

• Request a personalized demo
• Review the technical documentation