Image of the week - FOCUS on fire
|
|
Combustion is hot stuff, playing a part in more than 80 percent of primary energy conversion processes worldwide; however, the way things burn remains a complex phenomenon, characterized by instabilities and side effects, such as pollutant formation and radiative heat transfer. Hot computing Complex numerical simulations are used to aid the design of industrial combustors, and now a team of researchers is using EuropeÂ's DEISA e-infrastructure to make these simulations even more accurate. The team, a collaboration between Olivier GicquelÂ's team at the EM2C laboratory of the Ecole Centrale Paris and the IDRIS team at CNRS in France, say CPU-power fueled their results. Â"The DEISA project gave us access to the coupling technology that we required,Â" says Gicquel. Â"It also provided us with computational resources to run the simulations. Within the DECI framework, we were provided 300,000 CPU hours on the IDRIS supercomputer, and we had dedicated access to up to 400 processors to run the coupled simulations.Â" GicquelÂ's project, called FOCUS, has already fired up some hot results; the team has developed new methods for state-of-the-art combustion simulation that show that taking radiation into consideration when making calculations modifies flame dynamics. Â"The models will be available to aid the design of high performanceÂ-that is, safer, cleaner and more reliableÂ-combustors for various industrial applications,Â" Gicquel said. |