Spectre: a UQ tool for the management, execution, and exploration of large-scale non-deterministic engineering CFD simulations

A proper simulation and modeling campaign grounded in the principles of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) requires rigorous identification and characterization of all the sources of uncertainty, estimates of numerical uncertainty, methods to propagate the uncertainties, and tools to plot and visualize effects upon the probability of pertinent system responses. A problem with the tools available today is that they are not easy to use and have a steep learning curve in several areas. These issues hamper wide‐spread adoption of non‐deterministic simulation and place a heavy support burden on the authors of codes like DAKOTA.JMSI Inc. dba Intelligent Light, proposes a new commercial software offering: Spectre: a UQ tool for the management, execution, and exploration of large‐scale non‐deterministic engineering CFD simulations. It will consist of a wizard based graphical user interface and web driven architecture backend. It includes a new UQ server based upon Sandia’s Dakota software, PostgreSQL database server and data extractors based upon JMSI’s CFD post‐processing software FieldView and VisIt/Libsim from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory communicating via a RESTful (HTTP‐syle) API . The web based GUI is wizard based and specifically designed to perform UQ studies for specific domains (i.e. gas turbines, rotorcraft, aerospace) and flow solvers (i.e. OpenFoam, OVERFLOW, Acusolve). A proof of concept user interface shall be developed using Javascript. The proof of concept Spectre‐ server consists of the Dakota server, a database server based upon PostgreSQL and the FieldView Compute Engine. The UI shall drive a UQ workflow for an aerodynamics study of an airfoil or rotor simulation campaign using the OVERFLOW2 code. Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) allows engineers to perform predictive simulations and make informed decision about the performance of complex engineered systems such as the next generation transport aircraft and fuel‐efficient automobile engines. JMSI proposes to build a software system around Dakota, software developed at Sandia National Lab for UQ based studies. JMSI’s 30 year experience in building engineering software used extensively by Lockheed, Boeing and the DoD ensures successful transfer of DOE research into the private sector. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: In order for industry and companies such as Boeing, to adopt UQ practices, they need easy to use tools that will help users overcome entrenched engineering cultural practices resistive to UQ, technological constraints such as the burden of large scale data management, and the data provenance needs to satisfy engineering certification standards. Spectre will help to propagate UQ capabilities into companies such as Boeing who rely upon new technology to remain competitive.