HPC and Fluid Dynamics in front of the sea. We meet Paolo Scuderi and his project!

This is Paolo Scuderi from Italy. Well guys, I am 25 years old and actually I am not a student anymore. I have just graduated from Politecnico di Torino a few days ago at DIMEAS Department. However, let me introduce who I am and how I was put in contact with PRACE.

I am an Aerospace Engineer, graduated cum laude on the 14th July 2021. I spent the last year developing my Master’s Thesis in collaboration with The von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, in Belgium. Unfortunately, due to the strange and hard Covid period, I was not able to reach the Institute and spend some days on-site. I worked online. At the beginning of that experience, I was sad. Of course, traveling and working on the project that you love is the happiest combination that every student-researchers would like to join. Anyway, having spent many hours in front of my PC, I joined CINECA Academy. With their continuous support, I met PRACE and I discovered a new passion regarding High-Performance Computing! Which is the best combination? I studied Aerospace Engineering and I specialized in Fluid Dynamics. As you know, I think, the Navier-Stokes equations are not analytically solved. Hence, only two different approaches are possible: the experimental one and the numerical one. The former is very expensive and not usable during a period like this. In this context, my Master’s Thesis has been associated with the numerical idea. In addition, as a consequence of the high computational cost of these simulations, the HPC systems have a lot of applications in the fluid dynamic world. For these reasons, when PRACE was presented to me, I felt incredibly motivated and I started to find some projects related to my field of studies. I found Summer of HPC, an amazing and interesting project which aim is to provide good knowledge of the usage of HPC systems around Europe to all the students. What’s better than this? Well, there was only one problem: finding a project related to Fluid Dynamics. Fortunately, the idea comes from the University of Luxembourg, where I am currently working.

Aerodynamic project at University of Luxemburg

My project aims to study the behavior of the external flow over the DrivAer car model developed at TU Munich. There are several configurations based on the shape of the geometry of the top, the underbody geometry, the mirror configurations, etc. … Cars, from an aerodynamic point of view, are blunt bodies. The typical two elementary contributions to the forces are pressures and stresses. When we are talking about blunt-body the first one is bigger than the second one. Hence, this is the case of DrivAer problem. For these bodies, a big wake is present in the region behind the car. The presence of the wake is associated with the lack of momentum, which is again related to the component of the total aerodynamic force projected in the parallel direction of the infinity flow: the drag. This is only one of the contributions to the total drag of the cars. Indeed, for instance, also the wheels and the underbody region contribute to it. As a consequence, to make the cars move, they need to develop a motor force such that it can win the negative contributions related to drag. In this context, the cars use combustible fossils to develop this force. The chemical energy provided by the reactions is transformed into mechanical energy thanks to the engine. As a result, a large amount of waste is released into the environment. One of the most important aims of car aerodynamic studies is to find the mechanism to reduce the drag, to finally reduce carbon dioxide and the NOx in the Earth’s atmosphere. These concepts are not valid for motorsport cars, where the main goal is to develop an aerodynamic body to reach the highest velocity possible. Indeed, drag is the most important aerodynamic force when the car speed is very high. Therefore, talking about urban cars, drag is more relevant in the motorway instead of in the normal urban city. However, the aerodynamic studies were not important until the energetic crisis of ’70. Nowadays, the aerodynamics of urban cars is important to save our environment. I am studying all these aspects in my project!

Something about you

And now, some questions for you. Are you ready? Feel free to answer and contact me, there are no wrong answers. We’re all here to learn something new!

Who are you? What and where are you studying?

Do you have any ideas about other problems, like the Navier-Stokes equations that are not currently solved? Are you sure that the Navier-Stokes equations are not always analytically solved?

Do you have any idea how long it takes to solve all turbulence scales (DNS) for a complex geometry? Why do we have to use the HPC system?

Do you have any idea about the aerodynamics difference between a classic car and a motorsport car?

Do you have an idea about the percentage of dioxide d carbon in the atmosphere related to cars?

Which are the most polluting means of transport?

I am waiting to reply to your answers.

Bye friends! 🙂