1. 1 Flow Simulation with CFDnet TICE 2000, Colloque international Université de Technologie de Troyes, 18-20 octobre 2000 Julio Militzer, F. E. Ham and Theo A. Bell Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

2. 2 Overview What is CFDnet? A Typical CFDnet Session CFDnet as an Educational Tool CFDnet - the Developmental Version Conclusions and Ongoing Work

3. 3 What is CFDnet?

4. 4 CFDnet is... Computational Fluid Dynamics on the Internet

5. 5 The Client: Java Applet User Interface + platform independence fast development internet-based access no installation instantaneous updates - relatively slow (for now) piracy issues applets must be small (transfer speed) thus not very powerful on their own...

6. 6 Adding Power to Java: “artifacto” Server Software “artifacto” allows the Java User Interface to start, stop, and interact with server-based processes CFDnet’s server-based processes include computationally intensive tasks like meshing, solving, and post-processing This division of labour is transparent to the Client

7. 7 The Solver Written in C Multi-Block Body-Fitted Grid Generation Parallel Processing using PVM Currently solves 2-D laminar and turbulent incompressible flows.

8. 8 A Typical CFDnet Session http://cfdnet.com

15. 15 Additional Features Tutorials are available through the web site to introduce users to some basic problems in fluid mechanics

16. 16 CFDnet as an Educational Tool

17. 17 Classroom evaluations CFDnet currently has more than 800 registered users. CFDnet was evaluated in the classroom by over 100 undergraduate and graduate students from Dalhousie University (East Coast) and University of Victoria (West Coast )

18. 18 Evaluation Results

19. 19 User Feedback 70% of students found CFDnet “easy” or “very easy” to use 82% felt the simulations were “good” or “very good” 77% felt response times were poor, 13% even suggested unacceptable

20. 20 Proposed improvements To improve response time we are currently: – Implementing copies of CFDnet on 4 IBM SP (multiprocessor) computers around Canada. –Computers are interconnected by the 1 Gb/s CANet III.

21. 21 Conclusions and Ongoing Work

22. 22 Conclusions An interactive, Internet-based educational CFD program has been developed and tested It incorporates Java programming, specialized server software, CFD meshing, solving, and visualization, and parallel processing.

23. 23 Ongoing Work Extend the capability of CFDnet to handle three dimensional multi-block turbulent flows. Improvement of the distributed high speed network of multiprocessor HPCs. Encourage colleagues to use it in their Fluid Mechanics courses and eventually... Develop a network of research partners to improve and extend the capability of all of the CFDnet components.