Computer simulations of fluid flow are playing an increasingly important role in aerodynamic design of numerous complex
systems, including aircraft, cars, ships and wind turbines. It is becoming apparent, however, that for a wide range of flow
problems current generation software packages used for aerodynamic design are not fit for purpose.
Specifically, for scenarios where flow is unsteady (highly separated flows, vortex dominated flows, acoustics problems etc.)
current generation software packages lack the required accuracy; since they are ubiquitously based on 'low-order' (first- or
second-order) accurate numerical methods. To solve challenging unsteady flow problems, and remove the need for
expensive physical prototyping, newer software based on advanced 'high-order' accurate numerical methods is required.
Additionally, this software must be able to achieve high-order accuracy on so-called 'unstructured grids' - used to mesh
complex engineering geometries, and it must be able to make effective use of next-generation 'many-core' computing
hardware (such as Nvidia Tesla GPUs, Intel Xeon Phi Co-Processors, and AMD FirePro GPUs), which will likely underpin
future HPC platforms.
Advanced high-order Flux Reconstruction (FR) methods, combined with many-core accelerators, could provide a `gamechanging'
technology capable of performing currently intractable unsteady turbulent flow simulations within the vicinity of
complex engineering geometries. However, various technical issues still need to be addressed before the above technology can be used `in anger' to solve real-world flow problems, which often involve `sliding planes' (situations when
two computational meshes slide across one another in a non-conforming fashion). The key objectives (of the academic
component) of the proposal are to develop a treatment for sliding planes that works effectively with FR methods on manycore
accelerators, and demonstrate the performance of FR methods on many-core accelerators for a range of industry led
test cases proposed by the financial (CFMS and Zenotech) and non-financial (Airbus, EADS, BAE, Rolls-Royce, ARA, UK
Aerodynamics Centre) project partners.
The academic component of the proposal will be lead by Dr. Peter Vincent (a Lecturer in the department of Aeronautics at
Imperial College London), and will build upon current work funded by 3 x EPSRC DTAs, 1 x Airbus/EPSRC iCASE DTA,
and an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship (EP/K027379/1).
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