1,361 research outputs found
NASA's supercomputing experience
A brief overview of NASA's recent experience in supercomputing is presented from two perspectives: early systems development and advanced supercomputing applications. NASA's role in supercomputing systems development is illustrated by discussion of activities carried out by the Numerical Aerodynamical Simulation Program. Current capabilities in advanced technology applications are illustrated with examples in turbulence physics, aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics, chemistry, and structural mechanics. Capabilities in science applications are illustrated by examples in astrophysics and atmospheric modeling. Future directions and NASA's new High Performance Computing Program are briefly discussed
CFD applications: The Lockheed perspective
The Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator (NAS) epitomizes the coming of age of supercomputing and opens exciting horizons in the world of numerical simulation. An overview of supercomputing at Lockheed Corporation in the area of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is presented. This overview will focus on developments and applications of CFD as an aircraft design tool and will attempt to present an assessment, withing this context, of the state-of-the-art in CFD methodology
Simulation Applications at NASA Ames Research Center
Aeronautical applications of simulation technology at Ames Research Center are described. The largest wind tunnel in the world is used to determine the flow field and aerodynamic characteristics of various aircraft, helicopter, and missile configurations. Large computers are used to obtain similar results through numerical solutions of the governing equations. Capabilities are illustrated by computer simulations of turbulence, aileron buzz, and an exhaust jet. Flight simulators are used to assess the handling qualities of advanced aircraft, particularly during takeoff and landing
Semianalytical calculation of the zonal-flow oscillation frequency in stellarators
Due to their capability to reduce turbulent transport in magnetized plasmas,
understanding the dynamics of zonal flows is an important problem in the fusion
programme. Since the pioneering work by Rosenbluth and Hinton in axisymmetric
tokamaks, it is known that studying the linear and collisionless relaxation of
zonal flow perturbations gives valuable information and physical insight.
Recently, the problem has been investigated in stellarators and it has been
found that in these devices the relaxation process exhibits a characteristic
feature: a damped oscillation. The frequency of this oscillation might be a
relevant parameter in the regulation of turbulent transport, and therefore its
efficient and accurate calculation is important. Although an analytical
expression can be derived for the frequency, its numerical evaluation is not
simple and has not been exploited systematically so far. Here, a numerical
method for its evaluation is considered, and the results are compared with
those obtained by calculating the frequency from gyrokinetic simulations. This
"semianalytical" approach for the determination of the zonal-flow frequency
reveals accurate and faster than the one based on gyrokinetic simulations.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figure
The impact of supercomputers on experimentation: A view from a national laboratory
The relative roles of large scale scientific computers and physical experiments in several science and engineering disciplines are discussed. Increasing dependence on computers is shown to be motivated both by the rapid growth in computer speed and memory, which permits accurate numerical simulation of complex physical phenomena, and by the rapid reduction in the cost of performing a calculation, which makes computation an increasingly attractive complement to experimentation. Computer speed and memory requirements are presented for selected areas of such disciplines as fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics, chemistry, atmospheric sciences, astronomy, and astrophysics, together with some examples of the complementary nature of computation and experiment. Finally, the impact of the emerging role of computers in the technical disciplines is discussed in terms of both the requirements for experimentation and the attainment of previously inaccessible information on physical processes
Status and prospects of computational fluid dynamics for unsteady transonic viscous flows
Applications of computational aerodynamics to aeronautical research, design, and analysis have increased rapidly over the past decade, and these applications offer significant benefits to aeroelasticians. The past developments are traced by means of a number of specific examples, and the trends are projected over the next several years. The crucial factors that limit the present capabilities for unsteady analyses are identified; they include computer speed and memory, algorithm and solution methods, grid generation, turbulence modeling, vortex modeling, data processing, and coupling of the aerodynamic and structural dynamic analyses. The prospects for overcoming these limitations are presented, and many improvements appear to be readily attainable. If so, a complete and reliable numerical simulation of the unsteady, transonic viscous flow around a realistic fighter aircraft configuration could become possible within the next decade. The possibilities of using artificial intelligence concepts to hasten the achievement of this goal are also discussed
Optimized up-down asymmetry to drive fast intrinsic rotation in tokamaks
Breaking the up-down symmetry of the tokamak poloidal cross-section can
significantly increase the spontaneous rotation due to turbulent momentum
transport. In this work, we optimize the shape of flux surfaces with both
tilted elongation and tilted triangularity in order to maximize this drive of
intrinsic rotation. Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations demonstrate that adding
optimally-tilted triangularity can double the momentum transport of a tilted
elliptical shape. This work indicates that tilting the elongation and
triangularity in an ITER-like device can reduce the energy transport and drive
intrinsic rotation with an Alfv\'{e}n Mach number on the order of . This
rotation is four times larger than the rotation expected in ITER and is
sufficient to stabilize MHD instabilities. It is shown that this optimal shape
can be created using the shaping coils of several experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
The Evolution of Adiabatic Supernova Remnants in a Turbulent, Magnetized Medium
(Abridged) We present the results of three dimensional calculations for the
MHD evolution of an adiabatic supernova remnant in both a uniform and turbulent
interstellar medium using the RIEMANN framework of Balsara. In the uniform
case, which contains an initially uniform magnetic field, the density structure
of the shell remains largely spherical, while the magnetic pressure and
synchrotron emissivity are enhanced along the plane perpendicular to the field
direction. This produces a bilateral or barrel-type morphology in synchrotron
emission for certain viewing angles. We then consider a case with a turbulent
external medium as in Balsara & Pouquet, characterized by .
Several important changes are found. First, despite the presence of a uniform
field, the overall synchrotron emissivity becomes approximately spherically
symmetric, on the whole, but is extremely patchy and time-variable, with
flickering on the order of a few computational time steps. We suggest that the
time and spatial variability of emission in early phase SNR evolution provides
information on the turbulent medium surrounding the remnant. The
shock-turbulence interaction is also shown to be a strong source of
helicity-generation and, therefore, has important consequences for magnetic
field generation. We compare our calculations to the Sedov-phase evolution, and
discuss how the emission characteristics of SNR may provide a diagnostic on the
nature of turbulence in the pre-supernova environment.Comment: ApJ, in press, 5 color figure
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