Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar

For the last decade, turbulence has been well-recognized internationally as a major problem in computational science worthy of the use of leading-edge computational resources, which are still advancing at a rapid pace.

In this talk we consider several important aspects of turbulence where simulations at $4096^3$ resolution are now capable of facilitating new insights that prior simulations could not provide. For example, we have found that at sufficiently high Reynolds number extreme events in high dissipation and enstrophy scale similarly and even tend to occur together or in close proximity. New progress has also made been in the study of Kolmogorov-Richardson inertial-range behavior for the motion of single fluid particles and multi-particle clusters at sufficiently high Reynolds number. In addition, other important uses of massive computational power include improving resolution of the small scales and studying turbulent mixing at the limits of both very high and very low molecular diffusivity.

In additional to addressing the flow physics we shall give an overview of the status of Petascale computational algorithms, and of the nontrivial Cyber challenges that currently characterize the frontier of computational science at the next level.