Ask the Supercomputer

This paper analyzes research work on developing techniques to study complex fluids. Although several computational fluid dynamics (CFD) vendors now sell desktop software that mechanical engineers can buy to model complex flows, many problems are still simply too hard for those applications. According to engineers, CFD programs for these complex problems can take years to write, even with the supercomputer's aid. Moreover, some flows may never be modeled: they are just too complex for even the most advanced software. Behr and a colleague, Matteo Pasquali, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University, are now at work writing a CFD application that will help a heart-pump manufacturer analyze how blood would move through different configurations of the pump. Pasquali and Behr spent two years trying to turn the pump geometry and performance data Baylor provided into usable data. They converted the pump's computer-aided design information and input it into their homegrown CFD program, then came up with software tools to rotate one part of the computationally meshed pump element with respect to another.