The conference on discrete simulation of fluid dynamics (dsfd.org) is the premier forum to discuss novel numerical methods for fluid flow including lattice gas automata (LGA), the lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE), discrete velocity methods (DVM), dissipative particle dynamics (DPD), smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH), direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), stochastic rotation dynamics (SRD), molecular dynamics (MD), and hybrid methods. The 19. meeting is held July 5-9, 2010 in Rome. Because of the significant cost of airfare underfunded researchers need additional support to attend meeting. The NSF funds provide partial support for 18 junior faculty members, postdocs and students from the US to present their research at this meeting. A local committee at North Dakota State University selected the travel support based on need, whether the applicant belongs to an underrepresented group, and the scientific soundness of the proposed research presentation.
Advances in materials, nanotechnology, information technology and biotechnology increasingly rely on novel numerical algorithms. So the training of students and postdocs who are developing the next generation of these methods is of paramount importance. This grant provides the most promising young researchers with the opportunity to learn about the newest developments from their peers, to exchange ideas with researchers who share similar interests, and the opportunity to present their own research results at a specialized conference in the field of novel numerical algorithms for the simulation of fluid dynamics.
Fluid dynamics is important for the understanding many applications from the air resistance of cars, over the flow properties of blood to nano-fluidics. The conference supported by this grant allowed leaders of the field of Discrete Simulation of Fluid Dynamics (DSFD) to present advances in the development of numerical techniques and their application to specific problems. This conference series brings together researchers from many different fields including Mathematics, Physics, Geosciences, Medicine, Chemical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering who are united in their interest in simulating a variety of fluid flow problems. The computational power available to researchers continues to increase exponentially. This continually opens up new areas to numerical approaches, which makes this a particularly exciting area to work in. This research used to be spearheaded by US researchers in the 80's, but US dominance has given way to a strong European leadership and an emerging Chinese presence. The funding of this grant allowed US researchers to present at the Rome conference in 2010 and leftover funds helped organize next years conference in Fargo, ND, increasing US participation fivefold. To give a specific example: simulating blood flow is complicated by the presence of a dense assembly of flexible red blood cells. At a detailed level blood can be simulated by representing blood cells as elastic membranes filled with a cell fluid surrounded by plasma. Such a representation is crucial when one is interested in the flow of blood cells through capillaries that can be smaller in diameter than the diameter of a free blood cell. At the level of, say, the heart, however, such detailed representation of blood flow is still beyond the capabilities of supercomputers. But, unlike the case where one blood cell has to deform to squeeze through the capillary blood vessel, such detail is not necessary to calculate the flow of blood through the heart. A much coarser description of the flow which, will only take into account the particulate nature of the flow in an average manner, is still able to calculate the force on the heart valves or effect of a specific design of an artificial heart valve.
