Parallel Large Scale Computations for Aerodynamic Aircraft Design with the German CFD System MEGAFLOW

Abstract

Within the framework of the German aerospace program, the national CFC project MEGAFLOW was initiated, which combines many of the CFD development activities from DLR, universities and aircraft industry. Its goal is the development and validation of a dependable and efficient numerical tool for the aerodynamic simulation of complete aircraft. The MEGAFLOW software system includes the block-structured Navier-Stokes code FLOWer and the unstructured Navier-Stokes code TAU. Both codes have reached a high level of maturity and they are being intensively used by the German aerospace industry in the design process of a new aircraft. This paper focuses on the aspects of parallel computing, which is one of the major issues for efficient computations in the industrial framework. The parallelization principle of both the block-structured and unstructured flow solver are outlined. Typical results for industrial applications are given with respect to efficiency and speed-up. Several large scale computations demonstrate the overall efficiency and quality of the MEGAFLOW software.