Large-Scale Parallel Distributed Computing

A virtual computing environment that integrates computer resources at different sites -- collectively known as NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG) -- is employed to simulate a large-scale memory and CPU-intensive aerospace application. This illustrates how IPG technology can be used to obtain a rigorous wake flow solution around the hovering rotors of a helicopter, where flow features are dominated by complex vortex dynamics.

This demonstration simulates wake flows around a UH-60 Blackhawk model rotor on the NASA IPG testbed consisting of SGI Origin 2000 platforms. Distributed parallel Navier-Stokes flow computations are made via the OVERFLOW-D code, and are adapted to the IPG execution environment by the Globus-MPICH-G toolkit. The flow domain is discretized by multiblock overset meshes.