Virtual certification of gas turbine engines - visualizing the DLR Rig250 compressor

High Performance Computing (HPC) critically underpins the design of aero-engines. With global emissions targets, engine designs require a fundamental change including designs utilizing sustainable aviation fuels and electric/hybrid flight. Virtual certification of designs with HPC is recognized as a key technology to meet these challenges, but require analysis on models with higher fidelity, using ultra-large scale executions. In this explanatory SC-SciVis showcase, we present results from time-accurate simulations of a 4.6B-element full 360-degree model of a production-representative gas turbine engine compressor, the Rig250 at DLR. This represents a grand challenge problem, at the fidelity for virtual certification standards. The results are achieved through Rolls-Royce’s Hydra CFD suite on ARCHER2. The compressor is visualized under off-design conditions, demonstrating flow contours of velocity, Mach number and iso-surfaces of vorticity. The level of detail and the HPC simulations leading to the visualizations demonstrate a step-change towards achieving virtual certification objectives under production settings