The objective of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) group at CERFACS is to solve problems involving both CFD and High Performance Computing (HPC). Despite the recent progresses observed in CFD, the solution of many flows of interest is still beyond present capabilities and the challenge of HPC for CFD remains as open and difficult as it ever was. In most CFD problems, brute force approaches still fail and advances in this field rely on defining proper compromises between physics and numerics.
This is especially true in the fields of CFD chosen at CERFACS: aerodynamics, turbulence, combustion, unsteady flows, coupled phenomena between fluid mechanics and other mechanisms (fluid structure interaction, optimization, two-phase flows, radiation, etc).
In the last years, the requests of CERFACS partners as well as the general orientation of the CFD community have lead the CFD project to a deeper implication in Direct Numerical Simulation tools, especially for reacting flows or for flows in complex geometries as well as to the development of new aspects of CFD such as multiphysics or active control. This has been done through an increase of the CFD staff so that the classical expertise of the CFD team (aerodynamics, turbulence modeling, optimization and parallelization, combustion) has been maintained or even reinforced. An important new field of application for CERFACS is Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The role of the CFD team and of its partners in the development of Large Eddy Simulation is now significant through multiple collaborations, contracts and dissemination of information and tools. The LES approach has emerged as a prospective technique for problems associated with time dependent phenomena and coherent eddy structures. This leading edge CFD technology can nowadays be applied to geometries of reasonable complexity (such as a combustion chambers in gas turbines but also in piston engines), which is the result of both constantly increasing computer capacities along with improved underlying numerical methods and grid techniques. In 2005, more than 50 scientists were working in the CFD project at CERFACS.
List of the main research projects
This is especially true in the fields of CFD chosen at CERFACS: aerodynamics, turbulence, combustion, unsteady flows, coupled phenomena between fluid mechanics and other mechanisms (fluid structure interaction, optimization, two-phase flows, radiation, etc).
In the last years, the requests of CERFACS partners as well as the general orientation of the CFD community have lead the CFD project to a deeper implication in Direct Numerical Simulation tools, especially for reacting flows or for flows in complex geometries as well as to the development of new aspects of CFD such as multiphysics or active control. This has been done through an increase of the CFD staff so that the classical expertise of the CFD team (aerodynamics, turbulence modeling, optimization and parallelization, combustion) has been maintained or even reinforced. An important new field of application for CERFACS is Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The role of the CFD team and of its partners in the development of Large Eddy Simulation is now significant through multiple collaborations, contracts and dissemination of information and tools. The LES approach has emerged as a prospective technique for problems associated with time dependent phenomena and coherent eddy structures. This leading edge CFD technology can nowadays be applied to geometries of reasonable complexity (such as a combustion chambers in gas turbines but also in piston engines), which is the result of both constantly increasing computer capacities along with improved underlying numerical methods and grid techniques. In 2005, more than 50 scientists were working in the CFD project at CERFACS.
List of the main research projects
CERFACS and EM2C lab (Ecole Centrale Paris) win a PRACE award to develop Large Eddy Simulation of rocket flows on new BULL system
The PRACE initiative (www.prace-project.eu) has announced that the proposal of EM2C and CERFACS to compute a new experiment dedicated to rocket flows and installed at ONERA was accepted. 8 million CPU hours will be used jointly by researchers in Toulouse and Paris to investigate how supercritical flows react to transverse acoustic forcing.
CERFACS award in INCITE program (Department of Energy) renewed
10 million CPU hours have been awarded to CERFACS in 2011 to continue studying combustion in gas turbines using Large Eddy Simulation (LES).
