Turbulence, the chaotic flow of fluids we see in everyday life—from water running out of a faucet to the air swirling around an airplane engine—remains one of the most complex puzzles in science.
Researchers at Georgia Tech are using advanced computer simulations to better understand the complicated physics behind turbulence, which could lead to new discoveries in both nature and engineering.
Turbulence is made up of unpredictable, disordered movements that occur across different time scales and in all directions.
Because of its chaotic nature, many aspects of turbulence are still poorly understood.
While computers can help study turbulence, simulating it accurately using physical laws requires enormous computing power, especially when studying rare and extreme fluctuations.
That’s where Frontier, the world’s first and fastest Exascale computer, comes in.
Frontier is capable of performing a quintillion (one billion billion) operations per second, making it an incredibly powerful tool for exploring the mysteries of turbulence.
“Turbulence is extremely complex, and it’s difficult to study through experiments or incomplete theories,” said P.K. Yeung, a professor at Georgia Tech.
“With Frontier’s world-leading resolution of over 5 trillion grid points, we’re now able to simulate turbulence at an unprecedented level of detail. This could lead to new discoveries and improvements in how we model turbulence.”
Yeung and his team were able to access Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as soon as it became operational. Thanks to a large allocation of computing time from the U.S. Department of Energy, they developed an algorithm specifically designed to harness Frontier’s capabilities for high-resolution simulations. Their research was recently published in Computer Physics Communications.
These simulations mark a major breakthrough in turbulence research, and Yeung believes they will help improve modeling techniques and lead to new insights.
The data from their simulations will also be shared with the public through the Johns Hopkins Turbulence Database, offering other scientists the opportunity to benefit from their work.
Thanks to the power of Frontier, the future of turbulence research looks brighter than ever.
Source: Georgia Institute of Technology.
