In this project, novel methods for the computationally efficient simulation of compressible fluid flow will be developed, with applications to aerospace and space physics.
Postdoctoral fellow: Dr. Lee Betchen
Lead faculty member: Dr. Hans De Sterck
Novel methods for the computationally efficient simulation of compressible fluid flow will be developed, with applications to aerospace and space physics. First, new formulations of multigrid techniques for the implicit solution of time-dependent flows will be studied, using parabolization to increase diagonal dominance and solution efficiency. Second, new direct solution methods for steady transonic flows will be developed, employing dynamical systems and characteristic analysis. These developments have the potential to achieve linear scaling of the execution time as a function of the number of unknowns, promising to make simulations orders of magnitude more efficient. The design of modern high-speed aircraft depends strongly upon the accurate and efficient prediction of compressible flows, and our developments will be of interest to potential non-academic partner organizations within the aerospace industry, including simulation software companies. Likewise, our methods accelerate space plasma simulation, which is of interest to Natural Resources Canada for Space Weather forecasting.