Compressible turbulent flows, characterized by a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, occur in many natural (supernovae explosions, volcanic eruptions, solar wind) and engineering systems (commercial and supersonic flight and propulsion, reacting flows). Due to their complexity, though, our fundamental understanding remains very limited, especially at high Reynolds numbers, restricting our ability to predict natural phenomena and design better engineering devices.
This research advances the knowledge of compressible turbulence only possible through massive simulations enabled by Cyberinfrastructure pushing, in turn, the frontiers of computational fluid dynamics. The simulations, unprecedented in size and detail, require novel software that efficiently uses hundreds of thousands of processors at Petascale levels and set the path for simulations at even larger scales. The emphasis is in extreme parallelism exploring advanced features likely to exist in future architectures including communication libraries, programming models and accelerators. The tremendous details unveiled by the simulations provide a unique opportunity for investigators to understand long-standing issues such as small-scale universality, inertial-range scaling, intermittency and largely unexplored areas such as mixing and dispersion of contaminants. Results are made available through a portal which allows the community to obtain flow fields, statistics and codes, and analyze massive datasets remotely.
Research and education are integrated at the interface between high-performance computing (HPC) and fluid mechanics. The educational goal is to (i) inspire students, including those from underrepresented groups, to pursue careers in HPC and fluid mechanics, and (ii) educate future scientists and engineers capable of deploying Petascale solutions to important societal and technological problems. Educational and research activities are integrated through curricular innovation, undergraduate research and the portal which is also used to disseminate results to a broader audience.
