Coefficient of Drag

[Phreakuency]

Hey all,
I was wondering if anybody knows of any good applications where you can put in a 3D model and have calculations run on it to determine the coefficient of friction. I say this because I have seen online how to make a do it yourself 3D scanner, and my PC is easily able to handle these calculations, what do you think.
Here are my PC specs.

• Intel Quad Core q6700
• 4 GB Corsair XMS2
• Asus P5K deluxe
• Agiea PhysX card
• BFG 8800 GT
• WD Raptor 150GB 10,000 RPM

I figure helping fuel efficiency may trump SETI@Home, at least for now.
If anyone can help me, I can run the calculations for your car too.
Thanks,
Phreakuency

[ConnClark]

If your really serious you may want more ram. There are a few free and opensource CFD/FEA software packages for linux. The one I have played with is OpenFoam. Its not the most straight forward software but there are a lot of people doing really cool stuff with it.

http://www.opencfd.co.uk/openfoam/
http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Main_Page
http://openfoam.cfd-online.com/cgi-bin/forum/discus.cgi

[Cd]

How steep of a learning curve is there to learn OPENFoam ?

Compared to MAYA, 3DS Max, Autocad ... XSI... Blender .... and so forth, how does it compare ?

I'm more of a visual person, and I looked at the interface on FLOworks and it looks easy to understand. How does OPENFoam compare ?

I ask because I haven't made the jump to Linux yet..... but it is lookinhg better all the time !

Thanks for the links !

[ConnClark]

Its a fairly steep learning curve. I haven't done anything significant with it yet. However its free and you can tinker with the formulas and variables to your hearts content. It also supports clustering and its not that difficult to do if you can afford more computers.