Using one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, researchers will simulate how fuel burns and hot gases flow through a jet engine’s combustor and turbine together—revealing physics that can boost efficiency, cut emissions, and enable tougher, longer-lasting designs.
The project aims to resolve the multi-scale spatio-temporal physics occurring in the continuous and integrated combustor and turbine path in a gas turbine engine. Understanding the physics plays a key role in bringing the overall efficiency of a gas turbine closer to the thermodynamic limits and in reducing emissions.
The scale of computationally resolving such physics and accommodating the dimensions of these components can only be realized through leadership class compute facilities. Aurora’s compute capability when combined with advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software will enable resolution of the detailed turbulent combustion physics. The insights from this project will enable enhanced efficiency and durability of future products. In gas turbine development, individual components are analyzed during development cycle but an ability to simulate two critical components of the hot gas path module will lay the foundation for more challenging multi-component simulations. The research proposed here would expand U.S. competitiveness in aerospace and computational capabilities by further pushing the application of computational techniques and leadership-class compute technologies to gas turbine systems. To overcome the complexity of modeling gas turbine, the project will combine modeling techniques as well as contrast combustion modeling strategies to understand trades between accuracy and simulation speed.
