MANUFACTURING

LEBANON, N.H.--In an economy where negative growth is all-too-normal, Fluent Incorporated reports dramatic and sustained growth in its computational fluid dynamics software products, particularly its Icepak(TM) software for desktop simulation of electronics cooling. Icepak, which entered the electronics cooling software market 7 years ago, grew its total revenue by 19% and thermal software license revenue by 12% in 2002 worldwide. In the first five years of its existence, its annualized growth was 60%. The software revenue in the first quarter of 2003 grew by 15% over the same period last year. Swimming Upstream How has this software achieved such robust growth while serving an industry in a downturn? "Thermal modeling in the design process is relatively new, and as its benefits have been seen more clearly amongst electronics designers, it has naturally become a 'must-have' tool on the designer's desktop, so some of this is driven by the growth curve of thermal modeling as a technology," says Prabhu Sathyamurthy, Icepak Business Manager for Fluent. "Icepak continues to focus on performance and usability by leveraging high-end technologies in Fluent. Other thermal modeling software providers have experienced negative or flat growth in the past two years while Icepak has continued to gain substantially. It's not a 'happy accident,'" he concludes. With Fluent's global presence and strong strategic partnerships, Icepak business has rapidly grown in Taiwan and China over the past year. "Fluent Inc. and the Icepak product development team continue to impress me with their ability to package advanced technological features in software releases that are progressively easier to use," says Dr. Gamal Refai-Ahmed, Principal Thermal Scientist at Ceyba, Canada. Clients Give Their Reasons Sathyamurthy says that Icepak is leading the market in both functionality and ease-of-use, and is providing unlimited phone support to ensure customer success, and many leading electronics manufacturers are beginning to standardize on Icepak as their global software of choice for thermal modeling. "We chose Icepak over other electronics cooling software for its ease-of-use and several advanced features," says Mattias Nyqvist of Emerson Energy Systems AB. "Icepak contains several features that benefit our needs, including the ability to handle circular, cylindrical, elliptical, and polygonal objects, both in 3D and 2D, allowing us to handle details like heatsink fins with aerodynamic design. Icepak is also faster due to the smaller meshes that follow the complex geometry. Further, the non-conformal (assembly) meshing creates models with fewer cells, retaining the degree of accuracy." "Schneider Electric, a leader in the field of electrical distribution and industrial automation, has standardized its thermal management tools, and has selected Icepak and FLUENT software from Fluent to help in this effort," says Laurent Tarbouriech of Schneider Electric. "Icepak's new ability of meshing assemblies separately has brought down my mesh count from 515,190 to 178,459. Thus, the results were achieved about three times faster and I investigated various design variations right within a day. I'm delighted and so was my boss!," says Christina Bohm of Motorola GmbH, Munich, Germany.