An Approach for Parallelizing Legacy CFD Applications

A complete understanding of a flexible helicopter rotor flight envelope requires computational resources beyond the reach of most design engineers. However, the advent of desktop computers with multi-core CPUs and GPUs makes such computations affordable if the software is designed to use multi-core hardware efficiently. Phase I demonstrated the feasibility of a re-engineering tool that facilitates software modernization. In Phase II, ParaTools and Sukra Helitek jointly offer to develop the software re-engineering tool prototyped in Phase I and to apply Phase I innovations to RotCFD, an Integrated Development Environment for rotors. RotCFD is the second generation of the Rot3dc rotorcraft simulation tool developed and commercialized by Sukra Helitek and licensed and used by the Army, NASA, Navy, and the rotorcraft industry. Rot3dc has been successfully used in major rotorcraft initiatives including the V-22 (Osprey), RAH-66 (Comanche) and Sikorsky's Cypher UAV. The tools and the technical expertise developed will be invaluable in modernizing and improving the performance of application codes in addition to enhancing the current capabilities of RotCFD. Such tools are important to maintaining the U.S. government's leadership position in the helicopter world, making it possible to produce and validate high quality designs at an affordable price.