Award Numbers: CBET-0742688; CBET-0742186; CBET-0742543 Principal Investigator: Wang, Hai; Knyazev, Vadim D.; Smith, Gregory P. Affiliation: University of Southern California; Catholic University of America; SRI International Proposal Title: Collaborative Research: Engineering Virtual Organization: Combustion Kinetics
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
This seed grant supports creation of a Virtual Organization of Combustion Kineticists (VOCK) with an initial research and learning goal of developing a chemical kinetics foundation model for C1-C4 hydrocarbon combustion. Because of the multi-phenomenon, multi-scale, and data- and knowledge-intensive nature of combustion processes, the development of these simulation tools can no longer be accomplished by an individual or a limited number of research group(s) even under a collaborative setting. To make further progress and achieve success, a coordinated community effort will be needed. The success of this effort will lend itself to a demonstration of the usefulness and effectiveness of a virtual organization to further the research objective of high-fidelity combustion simulations. Three related task groups will be deployed and tested as the prototypes for full virtual organization implementation, creating a conceptual design and catalyzing full implementation of a broader virtual organization for developing high-performance computing tools for combustion simulations. As a cyberinfrastructure-enabling tool, PrIMe (www.primekinetics.org) will be used to facilitate data gathering, model generation, and member communication. In addition, a wide range of shared community resources have been identified to achieve success.
A large part of the project focus is to experiment with the organization principles and structures, the coordination of task groups to achieve the common goal of VOCK, and member participation/collaboration. The anticipated project outcomes include a document of formal user requirements and a trial chemical kinetic foundation model to demonstrate the effectiveness of VOCK. More importantly, VOCK is expected to serve as an exemplary combustion virtual organization with broad participation, effective governance principles and structures, and a mutually supportive organization culture that encourages even broader participation.
