Addressing Challenges Through Effective Utilisation of High Performance Computing - a case for the UK Consortium on Turbulent Reacting Flows (UKCTRF)

The new expanded UK Consortium on Turbulent Reacting Flows (UKCTRF) will further utilise the developments of High-Performance Computing (HPC) to offer improved fundamental understanding and modelling of turbulent reacting flows, which are pivotal in the effective usage of energy resources, development of reliable fire safety measures, and manipulation of the combustion processes to ensure environmental friendliness. These challenges are multi-faceted, and will require collaboration across a wide range of scientific areas. The UKCTRF brings together 40 experts (PI, 6 Co-Investigators, and 33 members) across 19 UK institutions, experienced in using HPC to enable concerted collaborative Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)-related fundamental and applied research on turbulent reacting flows to reduce duplication, and tackle challenges grander than individual attempts. Since its inception in 2014, the UKCTRF has achieved significant scientific and industrial impact with over 400 journal and conference papers which utilised ARCHER. The President of the Combustion Institute, Prof. J.F. Driscoll, has stated in his support letter that the publications of the UKCTRF members are among the best which help develop the minds of young researchers and the support letter from Rolls Royce states that as a result of the UKCTRF significant progress was made in the prediction of combustion phenomena with the help of HPC. Over the next 4 years, the consortium's goals are to: (i) further utilise HPC resources to conduct world-leading turbulent reacting flow research involving Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS); (ii) extract fundamental physical insights from simulations to develop high-fidelity modelling methodologies to study turbulent reacting flows relevant to power production, transportation and fire safety engineering; and (iii) ensure a forward-looking software development strategy to develop computationally efficient algorithms, and effectively exploit current and future developments of HPC hardware. The proposed research will build on the foundations of the current UKCTRF (2014-2019) and Flagship Software development (EP/P022286/1) projects and will address universal challenges of energy efficiency, sustainability and high-fidelity fire safety. The progress in HPC will enable this new incarnation of UKCTRF to reinforce existing strengths, but also address the following timely intellectual and industry-driven challenges: (i) simulation and modelling of multi-phase reacting flows (e.g. droplet and pulverised coal/biomass combustion); (ii) combustion analysis of biogas and low calorific fuels derived from coal gasification; (iii) flame-wall interaction; and (iv) combustion at elevated pressures, which have only recently become accessible due to the advancement of HPC.

The major impacts of this research endeavour are summarised as follows:
(i) Fundamental understanding and modelling of turbulent reacting flows: The research activities in the UKCTRF will contribute to all the major modelling strategies (e.g. flamelets, Conditional Moment Closure and Probability Density Function) of turbulent reacting flows. The high-fidelity computational methodologies developed in the project will lead to accurate prediction from CFD simulations, which can help in the design of IC engines and gas turbines for better efficiency and environment friendliness and in the abatement of fire and explosion hazards. This suggests that the findings of this research endeavour will be of particular interest to power plant and automobile sectors of the industry (e.g. Rolls Royce, Siemens and Shell etc.). The research outcomes will be disseminated through participation of the consortium members in international conferences (Int. Comb. Symp., Int. Col. Dyn. Explosions and Reactive Systems, Med. Comb. Symp., Eur. Comb. Meeting, SIAM Num. Comb. Conf. etc.) and their publication in reputed scientific journals (Comb. Flame, Comb. Sci. Tech., Comb. Theor. Model., J. Fluid Mech., Phys. Fluids etc.) The research will also be presented by the members in the meetings of the British Combustion Institute and the Institute of Physics to attract attention from the automotive, gas turbine and fire-safety industry in the UK. The DNS and LES databases resulting from the project will be made available to other interested researchers upon request. Dissemination will take place also through the meetings of the Combustion Science and Technology Special Interests Group of the UK Fluids Network (EP/N032861/1), which will be especially utilised to attract new members and initiate collaboration with experimentalists.
(ii)IC-engine, gas turbine and fire related applications: The design-cycles of modern combustors and fire-safety engineering measures depend heavily on the predictive capability of advanced CFD calculations. The fundamental physical insights and high-fidelity models resulting from this project will have maximum benefit for manufacturers of new generation IC-engines (especially because conventional Petrol and Diesel engines will be phased out by 2040 in the UK) and gas turbines, who are engaged in developing new low-pollution and high efficiency engines, and also influence the design of safety measures for fire and explosion hazards in modern buildings and tunnels. The technological advancements of this consortium will also help the UK based industries (e.g. Renuda, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Shell etc.), which will also bring a long-term benefit for society. The computational data will be shared to other research groups, and will play a significant role in devising and calibrating new models to carry out high-fidelity simulations. Finally, the CFD software community, who use state-of-the-art combustion models in their codes to yield high-fidelity predictions, will be benefited by the research.
(iii) Manpower development: The proposed project is based on the collaboration between the different turbulent reacting flow research groups in the UK, which will ensure an extensive knowledge exchange between Consortium members and the PhD students and RAs working in this project. This will not only broaden the expertise of the investigators but also be highly valuable for the RAs and PhD students for their academic and career development. The RAs and PhD students will receive extensive training on a variety of topics such as advanced thermo-fluid mechanics, turbulence, reduced chemistry, and combustion model development. They will also learn advanced techniques for high performance computing, which will improve their analytical and mathematical skills. This project lays substantial emphasis on the development of both technical and transferable skills of the RAs and PhD students, which, in turn, increases the chances of their employability.