The UK Turbulence Consortium
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Aeronautics
Abstract
Understanding, predicting and controlling turbulent flows is of central importance and a limiting factor to a vast range of industries: naval, aeronautical, automotive, power generation, process, pharmaceutical, meteorological and environmental. Many of the environmental and energy-related issues we face today cannot possibly be tackled without a better understanding of turbulent flows. The UK Turbulence Consortium (UKTC) is a group of UK researchers committed to undertaking high quality, world leading turbulence simulation and scientific research using high performance computing systems. Funded in 1995, the UKTC has been through six highly successful iterations, with significant growth, from 5 original members to 70 members from nearly 30 UK institutions for the present bid, with an inclusive approach to developing and serving the community. Our view is that the key to advances in turbulence is by sustaining and stimulating interaction among researchers. It is essential that a diverse range of viewpoints, opinions, strategies and methods are brought together in an efficient and constructive manner. The essence of the UK Turbulence Consortium is to provide the central core of a needed critical mass activity considering the big challenges posed by turbulence.
In the last 25 years, the UKTC has (i) demonstrated its ability to convert access to national High-End Computing (HEC) resources into internationally leading research, (ii) established its international competitiveness, (iii) helped its members to leverage and secure multi-million pound grants from governmental funding bodies and industries, (iv) allowed the discovery of new fluid flow phenomena which have led to new ways of improving beneficial effects and reducing negative effects of turbulent flows and (v) facilitated the design of more sophisticated turbulence models redefining industry standards.
In the last 25 years, the UKTC has (i) demonstrated its ability to convert access to national High-End Computing (HEC) resources into internationally leading research, (ii) established its international competitiveness, (iii) helped its members to leverage and secure multi-million pound grants from governmental funding bodies and industries, (iv) allowed the discovery of new fluid flow phenomena which have led to new ways of improving beneficial effects and reducing negative effects of turbulent flows and (v) facilitated the design of more sophisticated turbulence models redefining industry standards.
Publications
Bempedelis N
(2024)
Data-driven optimisation of wind farm layout and wake steering with large-eddy simulations
in Wind Energy Science
Bempedelis N
(2023)
Turbulent entrainment in finite-length wind farms
in Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Bilbao-Ludena J
(2023)
Structure of vorticity and turbulence fields in a separated flow around a finite wing: Analysis using direct numerical simulation
in Physical Review Fluids
Capocci D
(2025)
Energy flux decomposition in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
in Journal of Plasma Physics
Cartland-Glover G
(2024)
Direct and Large Eddy Simulation XIII - Proceedings of DLES13
Chen X
(2023)
Backflow structures in turbulent pipe flows at low to moderate Reynolds numbers
in Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Chen Y
(2024)
Buoyancy-driven attraction of active droplets
in Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Fang J
(2023)
Direct numerical simulation of supersonic internal flow in a model scramjet combustor under a non-reactive condition
in Physics of Fluids
| Description | The UK Turbulence Consortium (UKTC) and CCP Turbulence bring together complementary expertise and co-ordinates activities to look at coherent, rational and strategic ways of understanding, predicting and controlling turbulent flows using High Performance Computing. The consortium and the CCP are crucial for the UK in order to augment and unify the research efforts of its participants and to communicate its findings to a wider audience. Firstly funded in 1995, the UKTC has been through six highly successful iterations. It has seen significant growth since its inception, from 5 original members to more than 80 members over 30 UK institutions. The CCP Turbulence was created in 2019 to support the UKTC members. In the last 4 decades, the UKTC and CCP Turbulence have (i) demonstrated its ability to convert access to national High-End Computing (HEC) resources into internationally-leading research (hundreds published papers since 1995 with thousands of non-self-citations), (ii) established its international competitiveness, (iii) helped its members to leverage and secure substantial funding from governmental bodies and industry, (iv) allowed the discovery of new fluid flow phenomena, leading to new ways of improving the beneficial effects and reducing the negative effects of turbulent flows, and (v) facilitated the design of more sophisticated turbulence models redefining industry standards. |
| Exploitation Route | By joining the UK Turbulence Consortium |
| Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Energy Transport |
| Title | Data Supporting "A comprehensive CFD investigation of tip vortex trajectory in shrouded wind turbines using compressible RANS solver" |
| Description | This dataset support the publication "A comprehensive CFD investigation of tip vortex trajectory in shrouded wind turbines using compressible RANS solver" it contains mesh, isosurface and additional data |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cord.cranfield.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_Supporting_A_comprehensive_CFD_investigation_of_t... |
| Title | Data Supporting "A comprehensive CFD investigation of tip vortex trajectory in shrouded wind turbines using compressible RANS solver" |
| Description | This dataset support the publication "A comprehensive CFD investigation of tip vortex trajectory in shrouded wind turbines using compressible RANS solver" it contains mesh, isosurface and additional data |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cord.cranfield.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_Supporting_A_comprehensive_CFD_investigation_of_t... |
| Title | Data supporting: "High-order hybrid DG-FV framework for compressible multi-fluid problems on unstructured meshes" |
| Description | This dataset contains binary output in Tecplot format for the test problems analysed in the "High-order hybrid DG-FV framework for compressible multi-fluid problems on unstructured meshes" JCP paper. Test cases included are: - Gas-water isolated material interface advection - 2D and 3D helium bubble interaction with shock wave - 2D shock driven air bubble collapse in water - 2D and 3D shock driven air bubble array collapse in water - 2D underwater explosion |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cord.cranfield.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_supporting_High-order_hybrid_DG-FV_framework_for_... |
| Title | Data supporting: "High-order hybrid DG-FV framework for compressible multi-fluid problems on unstructured meshes" |
| Description | This dataset contains binary output in Tecplot format for the test problems analysed in the "High-order hybrid DG-FV framework for compressible multi-fluid problems on unstructured meshes" JCP paper. Test cases included are: - Gas-water isolated material interface advection - 2D and 3D helium bubble interaction with shock wave - 2D shock driven air bubble collapse in water - 2D and 3D shock driven air bubble array collapse in water - 2D underwater explosion |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cord.cranfield.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_supporting_High-order_hybrid_DG-FV_framework_for_... |
| Title | Numerical simulation of the inviscid Taylor-Green Vortex using a Discontinuous Galerkin method with adaptive filtering to stabilize the solution: data |
| Description | Numerical simulation of the inviscid Taylor-Green Vortex using a Discontinuous Galerkin method with adaptive filtering to stabilize the solution. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cord.cranfield.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Numerical_simulation_of_the_inviscid_Taylor-Green_Vort... |
| Title | Numerical simulation of the inviscid Taylor-Green Vortex using a Discontinuous Galerkin method with adaptive filtering to stabilize the solution: data |
| Description | Numerical simulation of the inviscid Taylor-Green Vortex using a Discontinuous Galerkin method with adaptive filtering to stabilize the solution. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://cord.cranfield.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Numerical_simulation_of_the_inviscid_Taylor-Green_Vort... |
| Description | University of Poitiers |
| Organisation | University of Poitiers |
| Country | France |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration with the University of Poitiers in France for the development of the 2DECOMP&FFT library and the Xcompact3d software |
| Collaborator Contribution | Various contributions to include new capabilities to 2DECOMP&FFT and Xcompact3d |
| Impact | -New releases of Xcompact3d -New release of 2DECOMP&FFT -Training activities |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Title | 2DECOMP&FFT |
| Description | The 2DECOMP&FFT library is a software framework written in modern Fortran to build large scale parallel applications. It is designed for applications using three-dimensional structured meshes with a particular focus on spatially implicit numerical algorithms. However, the library can be easily used with other discretisation schemes based on a structured layout and where pencil decomposition can apply. It is based on a general-purpose 2D pencil decomposition for data distribution and data Input Output (I/O). A 1D slab decomposition is also available as a special case of the 2D pencil decomposition. The library includes a highly scalable and efficient interface to perform three-dimensional Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs). The library has been designed to be user-friendly, with a clean application programming interface hiding most communication details from application developers, and portable with support for modern CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs (support for AMD and Intel GPUs to follow). |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Possibility to use GPU hardware |
| URL | https://www.theoj.org/joss-papers/joss.05813/10.21105.joss.05813.pdf |
| Title | Code_Saturne |
| Description | Code_Saturne is a multi-physics CFD open source software first developed by industry, and now widely spread in academia. It relies on the finite-volume method to discretise the equations up to 2nd order in space and time, and is suitable for LES in complex geometries, as its unstructured nature support sany type of cells. It is written in C, Fortran and Python is used to manage the simulations. MPI/OpenMP handle parallelisation, and the code has shown good performance on over 3 million threads on Argonne's Blue Gene/Q. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | See list of publications |
| URL | https://www.code-saturne.org |
| Title | Nektar++ |
| Description | Nektar++ is a tensor product based finite element package designed to allow one to construct efficient classical low polynomial order h-type solvers (where h is the size of the finite element) as well as higher p-order piecewise polynomial order solvers. Nektar++ is available in both a source-code distribution and as pre-compiled binary packages for a number of operating systems. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | See list of publications |
| URL | https://www.nektar.info/ |
| Title | Xcompact3d |
| Description | Xcompact3d is a Fortran-based framework of high-order finite-difference flow solvers dedicated to the study of turbulent flows. Dedicated to Direct and Large Eddy Simulations (DNS/LES) for which the largest turbulent scales are simulated, it can combine the versatility of industrial codes with the accuracy of spectral codes. Its user-friendliness, simplicity, versatility, accuracy, scalability, portability and efficiency makes it an attractive tool for the Computational Fluid Dynamics community. XCompact3d is currently able to solve the incompressible and low-Mach number variable density Navier-Stokes equations using sixth-order compact finite-difference schemes with a spectral-like accuracy on a monobloc Cartesian mesh. It was initially designed in France in the mid-90's for serial processors and later converted to HPC systems. It can now be used efficiently on hundreds of thousands CPU cores to investigate turbulence and heat transfer problems thanks to the open-source library 2DECOMP&FFT (a Fortran-based 2D pencil decomposition framework to support building large-scale parallel applications on distributed memory systems using MPI; the library has a Fast Fourier Transform module). When dealing with incompressible flows, the fractional step method used to advance the simulation in time requires to solve a Poisson equation. This equation is fully solved in spectral space via the use of relevant 3D Fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), allowing the use of any kind of boundary conditions for the velocity field. Using the concept of the modified wavenumber (to allow for operations in the spectral space to have the same accuracy as if they were performed in the physical space), the divergence free condition is ensured up to machine accuracy. The pressure field is staggered from the velocity field by half a mesh to avoid spurious oscillations created by the implicit finite-difference schemes. The modelling of a fixed or moving solid body inside the computational domain is performed with a customised Immersed Boundary Method. It is based on a direct forcing term in the Navier-Stokes equations to ensure a no-slip boundary condition at the wall of the solid body while imposing non-zero velocities inside the solid body to avoid discontinuities on the velocity field. This customised IBM, fully compatible with the 2D domain decomposition and with a possible mesh refinement at the wall, is based on a 1D expansion of the velocity field from fluid regions into solid regions using Lagrange polynomials or spline reconstructions. In order to reach high velocities in a context of LES, it is possible to customise the coefficients of the second derivative schemes (used for the viscous term) to add extra numerical dissipation in the simulation as a substitute of the missing dissipation from the small turbulent scales that are not resolved. Xcompact3d is currently being used by many research groups worldwide to study gravity currents, wall-bounded turbulence, wake and jet flows, wind farms and active flow control solutions to mitigate turbulence. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | see list of publications |
| URL | http://www.incompact3d.com |
| Description | New Scientist Live 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | premier science festival held from October 12 to 14, 2024, at ExCeL London and online. The event featured over 70 speakers, 80 exhibits, and five stages covering topics from the universe to the human mind. Highlights included interactive experiences like the "Hospital of the Future" by King's College London, showcasing advancements in healthcare technology. The final day was dedicated to schools, inspiring over 6,000 students with hands-on activities and talks. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://live.newscientist.com/ |
| Description | Training and hackathon activities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | various training sessions and hackathons were organised to show other scientists how to use our software |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |