Computational Fluid Dynamics

Project reference: 2219

CFD is solving time-dependent partial differential equations (PDE), and PDE is solved by numerical approximation, which brings the system of equations (matrices and vectors) that need to be solved either by direct or indirect solvers. These solvers need a huge computational power in terms of the chosen problem. Moreover, Pre-processing and post-processing (time step solutions) also require much computational power to visualize or make a movie.

For example, efficient car modeling is essential for fuel efficiency, leading to environmentally friendly, particularly with CO2 emission and electricity consumption. A car can be a passenger car or race car, but lift and drag are the main parameters that need to be studied for efficient car modeling.

However, there are many CFD-based commercials or open-based solvers are available for solving the exiting CFD problems. Students will be working using the FEniCS open-source FEM-based solver in this project. FEniCS has recently evolved as a very efficient solver in parallel architecture settings. So, it is really worth trying some of the existing CFD problems to study and explore in the FEniCS environment.

Project Mentor: Dr. Ezhilmathi Krishnasamy

Project Co-mentor: Prof. Pascal Bouvry

Site Co-ordinator: Dr. Ezhilmathi Krishnasamy

Learning Outcomes:

* Computational fluid dynamics using FEniCS
* Finite Element Methods for solving realistic CFD problems
* Pre-processing, computation and post processing techniques (data analysis)
* Parallel visualization

Student Prerequisites (compulsory):
* Finite Element Methods

Student Prerequisites (desirable):
* Familier with FeniCS and computational mathematics.

Training Materials:

* Paraview : https://www.paraview.org/hpc/

* VisIt : https://wci.llnl.gov/simulation/computer-codes/visit/

* FeniCS : https://fenicsproject.org/

Workplan:

Week 1: HPC training
Week 2: Project preparation
Week 3: Preprocessing
Week 4: Simulation
Week 5: Simulation
Week 6: Post processing
Week 7: Results analysis
Week 8: Report writing

Final Product Description:
* Compare the simulation results against any one of the model with its wind tunnel experimental results.

Adapting the Project: Increasing the Difficulty:
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Adapting the Project: Decreasing the Difficulty:
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Resources:
FeniCS is installed and available. Other open source tools (both for simulation and pre-processing) can be installed upon student request.
Paraview and VisIt (data processing and visualization) are also available.

Organisation:
ULux-University of Luxembourg