A Distributed Architecture for Parallel CFD Visualization

Large-scale scientific and engineering simulations currently being performed on high-end parallel computers have exceeded the capabilities of present visualization systems. The proposed system utilizes distributed object technologies (OMG CORBA) to perform parallel, distributed visualization of large computational problems, like computational fluid dynamics and structural dynamics. Distributed algorithms for iso-surfacing, cutting, particle tracing and feature extraction will be incorporated into CFD-VIEW, a commercially available software package which will serve as a vehicle to demonstrate these concepts and algorithms. The proposed visualization software will support conventional grid topologies such as multi-block structured grids and unstructured tetrahedral grids as well as state of the art unstructured adaptive prismatic and cartesian grids. In Phase I, a detailed distributed object-oriented architecture will be designed, and the current visualization system will be converted. Selected visualization algorithms will be parallelized, and their performance will be evaluated by application to several large CFD simulations such as 3D projectile aerodynamics, sabot separation, or projectile balloting. In Phase II, the visualization system will be consolidated, and formal interfaces will be created for those distributed objects which are useful for enterprise wide use. The parallel visualization software will be integrated into the ARL/HPCD scientific visualization environment A Distributed object Architecture enables transparent, high performance parallelism of visualization algorithms. Refinement of the objects will allow enterprise-wide integration of the engineering work flow from Grid-Generation, Flow-Simulation to Visualization