Overview
The Fidelity CharLES solver is the industry’s first high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver that expands the practical application of large eddy simulations (LES) to a broad range of engineering applications in aerospace, automotive, and turbomachinery.
Designed to tackle the toughest fluid dynamics challenges, it accurately predicts traditionally complex problems for CFD in aeroacoustics, aerodynamics, combustion, heat transfer, and multiphase.
Key Benefits
Massively parallel and scalable, capable of leveraging large computation resources to get accurate answers in hours instead of days.
Purpose-built for LES, with high-quality mesh generation, accurate and stable non-dissipative numerical methods, and accurate modeling for unresolved physics.
Scalable, GPU-resident solver provides the fastest time to results with the best price performance and lowest power consumption.
Accurately predicts traditionally complex problems for CFD, such as flow separation, transition, turbulent mixing, and aero-acoustic noise, among others.
Features
Predictive high-fidelity simulations require high-quality meshes. By leveraging clipped Voronoi diagrams, the polyhedral mesh generator is fast, scalable, and robust when processing most complex geometries. Users can easily introduce resolution where needed, run coarse simulations of complex geometries, and simulate moving geometries.
Realizing the predictive benefits of LES requires much more than just turning on time dependence and changing the turbulence model. Fidelity CharLES combines advanced numerical methods, models, and extreme scalability in CPU-based and GPU-based high-performance computing environments.
Fidelity CharLES provides solver advancements on the numerical scheme, and leverages GPU computing, enabling massive LES simulations, such as the accurate simulation of a realistic aircraft in landing configuration, in 12 hours on just two GPU nodes.
Leveraging these modern compute architectures provides up to 9X throughput for the same cost with 17X less energy consumption of CPUs.
Dimensional reduction of the large amount of data produced by high-fidelity simulation is a supercomputing problem. Fidelity CharLES has multiple parallel and serial tools to analyze these large datasets and quickly provide answers.
Applications
Aeroacoustics predictions are relevant for various industrial applications, from supersonic jets to fan noise to combustion-acoustic interactions in gas turbines. Even for “extremely loud” noises, the pressure fluctuations that constitute the radiated sound are orders of magnitude smaller than the ambient pressure and much smaller than the near-field pressure disturbances associated with turbulent compressible flow.
Fidelity CharLES is ideally suited to capture such important but low-energetic acoustic features, thanks to its unsteady simulation capabilities with low-dissipation and low-dispersion numerical methods.
CharLES can predict aerodynamic forces for complex geometries over a range of flow regimes from low-Mach to transonic and supersonic. For example, it can capture changes in vehicle drag due to subtle geometric design modifications and identify the onset of stall over high angle of attack airfoils on a commercial aircraft.
Turbulent combustion underpins much of our modern energy economy. Power generation, aviation, aerospace, and automotive technologies all depend on how well we mix reactants, release their energy, and manage their byproducts. Making these processes cleaner, safer, and more efficient is crucial to navigating the future of our planet.
The combustion models in CharLES work seamlessly with its advanced numerics to deliver accurate and cost-effective predictions of turbulent reacting flows. These solutions and specialized data processing tools and analytics enable combustion engineers to understand their current systems better and imagine the next generation of improved combustion technologies.
The accurate prediction of heat transfer can be difficult in turbulent flow but is critical to the durability of many machines. Accurate heat transfer predictions require careful attention to the local state of the boundary layer, the presence of flow separation and reattachment, and the transition to turbulence. The control of boundary layer grid size made possible by Cascade’s Voronoi-based meshing technology, combined with the CharLES solver’s advanced numerical methods and wall modeling, can yield actionable results for absolute heat flux predictions. Conjugate heat transfer is also available with minimal impact on solver speed.
Accurate prediction of multiphase flows is significant in a variety of engineering applications such as chemical and paint spraying, oil and gas transportation, coolant systems, and liquid fuel injection in combustion engines. For example, high-fidelity simulations of liquid injectors can provide detailed unsteady physics of atomization and fuel-air mixing to design or optimize an injector where experiments usually have limited access.
The multiphase model in CharLES is based on the advanced volume-of-fluid method coupled with a Lagrangian spray tracking approach to effectively predict large-scale liquid structures as well as fine-scale droplets and particles for a wide range of flow regimes from low-Mach to supersonic.
Customer Stories
These simulations are more than just experiments. They provide new insights, which, combined with human creativity, allow for opportunities to improve designs within the practical product cycle.
Joe Citeno, GE Power
Manager’s Guide to Simulation Aeroacoustics
In today’s fast-paced world of innovation and technological advances, sound—particularly unwanted or harmful noise—has become a paramount concern. Whether it’s the mighty roar of a jet engine or the rhythmic swoosh of a wind turbine, the soundscapes that modern technologies create have direct implications on user experience, environmental harmony, and regulatory compliance. This is where aeroacoustics simulation comes into play. This guide provides an overview of aeroacoustics simulations, highlighting the strategic importance, cost implications, and other managerial aspects.
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