News
RCAAPS Phase II Award Announcement
Intelligent Light to develop scalable post-processing system for aero-acoustics and tera-scale data under NASA Phase II SBIR contract
Rutherford, NJ (November 13, 2007) — Intelligent Light was recently selected by the NASA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program to advance the development of its Rotorcraft Computational Aero-Acoustics Post-processing System or RCAAPS. The two year project will enable efficient post-processing of time-dependent, aero-acoustics simulations that exceed 10 terabytes in size. The improvements in post-processing capabilities required by next generation aero-acoustics simulations will benefit the CFD and acoustics community broadly as they are deployed in FieldView products. The initial concepts for RCAAPS were developed under a NASA Phase I SBIR award and success in that effort lead to the competitive selection of Intelligent Light for Phase II funding.
Rotorcraft manufacturers Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky are supporters of this project and the development will support the emerging use of aero-acoustics in aircraft engine manufacturers such as GE, Pratt and Whitney, and Rolls Royce. All of these organizations are generating large and growing volumes of complex CFD data and wish to predict aero-acoustics behavior. They are looking to Intelligent Light to help them address the need to manage this large data and efficiently extract meaningful results. Aero-acoustics simulations are increasingly being performed to reduce environmental noise generated by rotorcraft and fixed wing aircraft in high-lift configurations. Aero-acoustics simulations are also being used to solve design challenges in wind energy development, automotive design, and even consumer products. The RCAAPS developed capabilities will be of use anywhere aeroacoustics or large, unsteady simulations are performed.
"Rotorcraft simulation requires high resolution simulations of phenomena that is highly unsteady," Earl P.N. Duque, Ph. D., manager of applied research explains. "When acoustics and CFD are coupled, the data demands are enormous. The RCAAPS team includes world-class thought leaders in CFD, parallel computing, and visualization. This project will deliver capabilities that will revolutionize the way investigators explore large datasets and tools to allow more complete and thorough use of CFD and acoustics data."
RCAAPS will bring together modern distributed computing systems, CFD solvers, and post-processing techniques with wholly new approaches to meet the challenges associated with very large unsteady multiphysics simulations. By explicitly integrating existing tools with new technological development, the result will be improvements that make a difference immediately and within existing work structures.
The program will develop highly scalable, parallel tools and libraries for speeding the computations associated with post-processing. High performance, parallel I/O libraries will deliver sustained performance during iterative processes such as optimization studies.
"RCAAPS is an example of where our Applied Research Group is providing custom R&D developing technology for a customer's specific need," said Steve Legensky, general manager, Intelligent Light. "We are eager to execute this development and to subsequently deliver the benefits of the effort to a wider community through the FieldView family of products." As the new technology is deployed in FieldView products, the utilization of their increasingly sophisticated simulation capabilities will become broadly available. The high performance libraries will support commercial and research workflows that consist of multiple solver codes including those from government, in-house, and commercially available applications.
About Intelligent Light
Intelligent Light, located in Rutherford, New Jersey, was founded in 1984 with a mission to provide the scientific and engineering community with the best possible tools for understanding data and communicating results. The company provides CFD and CAE post-processing and big data visualization capability, under the industry leading FieldView brand, to thousands of HPC users in the aerospace, automotive and general manufacturing industries. Their unique development team is composed of CFD leaders, computer scientists, and visualization experts focused on listening to clients and delivering products that meet their needs.
FieldView is a trademark of Intelligent Light. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.