CAD-Integrated Direct-to-HPC Simulation for Design and Optimization

Problem Being Addressed: The lack of availability, usability, and the cost of development, own- ership, and operation of high performance computation-ready simulation capabilities. These are significant barriers to utilization of modeling & simulation for the American industry; most open- source, free technologies are difficult to use and/or have not been validated to the extent needed for industrial applications. Many commercial tools that are easy to use are prohibitively expensive to own, by hardening currently available research-quality simulation tools, we can produce capabilities that are both free and easy to use. How This Problem is Being Addressed: We will harden an ASCI-developed multiphysics simulation application and distribute it under an open-source license that allows unrestricted commercial use. This project will produce the only open-source, massively parallel multiphysics application that is freely available and provides end-to-end, efficient, direct computer aided design to high performance computing simulation capabilities to government, industry, and academic users. The product will stand ready to utilize the nation’s modern high performance computing resources. Once hardened for ease of installation and use, the package will help lower the entry barriers to high performance computing-based modeling & simulation. What Will be Done in Phase I: Upon completion of Phase I, the user will have the ability to intuitively setup and run a complete numerical simulation on a remote high performance computing grid directly from their computer aided design environment without needing to edit input files, use the command line, or have high performance computing-specific experience or knowledge. The integrated computer aided design-to-high-performance-computing-product will allow the user to setup and run simulations easily without leaving the familiarity of their native computer aided design environment. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: A freely available, open-source, and easily exten- sible massively parallel-ready multiphysics simulation capability for use by engineers and analysts from industry and other environments will be generated from this project. Such a capability will significantly reduce the barrier to entry for private sector entities endeavoring to utilize multiphysics simulations and incorporate them into design processes that leverage the nation’s extensive comput- ing resources. The licensing model adopted will facilitate the use of this product and its extension in any environment; the benefits include increased realism, decreased time-to-solution, increased manufacturing capability, reduced manufacturing cost, and a decrease in the product design cycle. The economic implications and range of commercial applications are large and promising. Modular high performance computing-ready simulation capabilities are the future of modeling & simulation for American industry, and a key to maintaining national competitiveness.