Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

With the support of the NSERC Discovery Grant ""Fundamental Studies on Incompressible Flat-Plate Boundary Layer and Pipe Flow"", our group is currently performing investigations on the zero-pressure-gradient flat-plate boundary layer over a continuous momentum-thickness Reynolds number range from 80 to 4,000 as well as the spatially-developing pipe flow from laminar through transition to fully turbulent. Three of our papers on the subject were featured individually in 2009 and 2010 as the cover-page articles by the two best journals in the field. One of them has already been cited more than 50 times. Two independent articles specifically commenting on our paper were published by world-renowned experts. We have established ourselves as one of the leading CFD groups in the world on direct numerical simulation of boundary layer and pipe flows. Our current new investigations are being conducted in two-steps. First, very-large-scale, spatially-developing DNS calculations are carried out using the massively parallel supercomputers located at the Ontario High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL). During the second step, the DNS results obtained at HPCVL are fetched back to local facilities and detailed analyses on the databases are performed. To the best of our knowledge, our new DNS computations that are currently being performed at HPCVL with grid sizes of 1 to 4 billion mesh points per simulation are the largest CFD simulations ever being conducted in Canada. Our local existing data access hardware (aside from the workstation) is inadequate for analyzing the huge databases (up to 60 TB per case) produced from our own DNS calculations at the HPCVL. The high-speed, high-capacity data system to be purchased with the support of NSERC RTI Grant will help us sustain our leading position in the world's fluid mechanics research community.