TGQR 2010Q4 Report.pdf - Teragridforum.org

to the seafloor. Vortex shedding causes energy transfer from fluid to the structure and leads to
high-amplitude vibrations that can trigger fatigue failure of the structural systems. These new
methods will help accurately evaluate, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively, the fatigue
failure phenomena that is triggered by the turbulence in the natural convective flows around
risers, thus providing a clearer and a more precise picture when the failure can happen. This will
help in taking preventive measure in time, and therefore will be important not only for the design
of these components, but also as a method to monitor these deep sea oil pipelines in the Gulf of
Mexico.
To visualize the 3D nature of turbulent flows, the team turned to NCSA’s Advanced Applications
Support visualization team. Visualization programmer Mark Van Moer used ParaView, a parallel
renderer, with custom VTK scripts to create visualizations for the team. “These visualizations
have tremendously benefited us in the method development phase,” says Masud.
This work will be presented at the 16th International Conference on Finite Elements in Flow
Problems, Munich, Germany, in March 2011.
2.2.11
Earth Sciences: A TeraGrid Community Climate System Modeling (CCSM) Portal (PI:
Matthew Huber, Purdue)
Graduate student Aaron Goldner used the
TeraGrid Community Climate System
Modeling Portal (developed at Purdue)
and TeraGrid computational resources to
show potential for wetter, rather than
drier, conditions in the American
Southwest (and, indeed, the entire
American West and East) with projected
climate change. The research, presented
at the American Geophysical Union fall
meeting in December 2010, offered
another indicator of where current
climate models can be refined. Goldner
was able to use TeraGrid resources for
the computationally demanding task of
including tropical cyclone winds in his
simulations. That yielded a different
potential picture of future water cycles
over North America than current
modeling, which doesn’t include
cyclonic winds and projects drought-like,
rather than wetter, conditions in areas
such as the American Southwest.
The graphical user interface of the
CCSM portal made it easier for Goldner
to set up his modeling initially, while
TeraGrid hardware enabled modeling at a
level of detail that still required more
than a month to complete. The CCSM
portal also has been used in combined
political science/earth and atmospheric
sciences classes at Purdue. The goal is to
Figure 2.11. Enhanced tropical cyclone activity within ocean models can
produce feedbacks that affect El Niño cycles. When these changes in El
Niño are used as boundary conditions within a global atmospheric 19 model
they cause increased rainfall over the entire United States by shifting
atmospheric circulation, thus altering hydrologic cycles.