The objective of the proposed effort is to develop a distributed multi-processor geometry system to fully support solver requirements (meshing, adaptation, and sensitivities) for analysis and design…

This is a cooperative agreement awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Syracuse University to develop a "Parallel Geometry for Design and Analysis" (PAGODA) software system. The objective is to create a distributed multi-processor geometry environment to fully support solver requirements for analysis and design on extreme-scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) grids. The $683,859 contract aims to extend the existing "Engineering Sketch Pad" (ESP) system to enable scalable access to high-fidelity geometry descriptions, accurate and robust geometry sensitivity computations, and faster regeneration of typical configurations. The resulting software will be made freely available under the GNU Lesser General Public License. This contract is not associated with any set-aside designations. The PAGODA system is intended to serve as a foundation for other extreme-scale geometry and mesh generation efforts, supporting NASA's CFD Vision 2030 study objectives.

The objective of the proposed effort is to develop a distributed multi-processor geometry system to fully support solver requirements (meshing, adaptation, and sensitivities) for analysis and design on extreme-scale CFD-type grids. The resulting software system, called the "parallel geometry for design and analysis" (pagoda), will be built upon the successful open-sourced "engineering sketch pad" (ESP) system that has been developed over the past several years. The "CFD vision 2030 study" mentioned several of the areas that are addressed by the proposed work. Specifically, the proposed work is aimed at providing scalable access to geometry descriptions of sufficient fidelity for analysis. This will be accomplished by: (1) distributing the geometry evaluation functions throughout a HPC environment, such that is IT local to whichever processor needs IT for the initial grid generation, for grid adaptation, and/or mesh curving; (2) accurately, robustly, and rapidly computing the geometry sensitivity information that is needed to support design optimization; and (3) significantly reducing the time needed to (RE)generate typical configurations (from the feature-tree to the brep). The software system developed under the proposed effort can serve as the foundation upon which other efforts in the "extreme-scale geometry and mesh generation environments" can build. Hence, the work proposed here is a key to the successful development of other grid generation efforts that are aimed at extreme-scale simulations, especially in HPC environments. The technical approach is to extend the "engineering sketch pad" (ESP) to support the geometry needs in current and future HPC environments. The specific tasks are: (1) construction of "egads-lite" which is a lightweight ansi-c version of the egads functions required by the meshing process, where the target is any high-performance computing equipment currently in use (including gpus); (2) extension of the analytic sensitivity capabilities of ESP to include blends, fillets, and chamfers, as well as outputs such as area and volume; (3) tools and techniques for transferring feature-trees, design parameters, and boundary representations throughout a HPC environment; (4) a RE-write of opencascade's solid boolean operators to significantly improve their speed and robustness and to take advantage of multicore and GPU systems; (5) deployment of pagoda to NASA's CART3D, FUN3D & overflow environments; and (6) annual demonstrations of analytic sensitivities for full aircraft and multiple solvers. The resulting software will be made freely available via the non-viral GNU lesser general public license (version 2.1).