The Challenge of Fluid Turbulence: the science, the data, and use of computational power

DATE: July 6th, 2005
TIME: 3:30 pm
LOCATION: 1st Floor Auditorium, San Diego SuperComputer Center

P.K. Yeung
Professor
School of Aerospace Engineering.
Georgia Institute of Technology

Turbulent fluid flows characterized by disorderly fluctuations over a wide range of scales in time and spacehave diverse applications in science and technology, such as aeronautics, meteorology, combustion, andthe environment. Despite many years of study, the complexity of turbulencehas resisted theoretical description and limited our abilityto predict natural phenomena and design improved engineeringdevices. However, recent advances in computational powerhave created great opportunities, via numerical simulationsat high grid-resolution providing massiveamounts of data (surpassing experiments) which are becoming a resource of wide interest in the research community.In this talk, we will present some recent advances madevia simulations at resolutions up to $2048^3$,which are the largest of their kind aimed atimportant problems and issues in turbulentmixing and contaminant dispersion which arisein combustion and pollutant transport.We also discuss computational needs as a functionof problem size and parameter range of interest.Use of the world's fastest supercomputersof ever-faster speed will enable us to reach ayet higher level in computational science and turbulence, with broad interdisciplinary impact.