Friday, February 21, 2014

SU2 Community Verification Studies

I think there is quite a bit of excitement and community involvement building around the SU2 code. Other than all of the updates and improvements in the recently released version 3 and SU2_EDU release, I am excited to see the wider community start to do some serious verification studies. The advecting vortex case linked in that discussion thread would be a good one to add to the Test Case collection.

The core SU2 devs have a recent AIAA paper on verification/validation cases that they have successfully run with SU2 and compared favorably to other codes. One thing that is conspicuously absent is grid convergence studies to verify order of accuracy. This is an ideal place for the community to contribute because you don't have to have hugely in-depth knowledge of the source code base to run a grid convergence study or contribute a tutorial or test case (though you do have to be a fairly competent user). Much to their credit, the SU2 team is soliciting just this kind of contribution (my emphasis):
Expanded tutorials: we would like additional tutorials that complement the existing set found in the web-based documentation. The tutorials can either detail and explain the functionality of SU2 (shape optimization, parallel computing, mesh deformation, etc.) or demonstrate general CFD knowledge (highlighting good meshes vs. bad meshes, the importance of CFL number, etc.). Tutorials are intended to be tools for teaching and learning, and they should follow the same style as the existing tutorials. They must provide any mesh or config files that are necessary for their completion. New or unique verification and validation cases would be of particular interest here.

Exciting times in open source CFD!

Thursday, February 6, 2014

TPS Sizing with Complex Step Method

TPS Sizing Optimization Using Complex Variable Differentiation Sensitivity
I stumbled upon an interesting old presentation that shows a neat application of the complex step method of calculating numerical derivatives for use in optimizing thermal protection system (TPS) thickness. The great thing about the method is that it is minimally intrusive.