PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Analysis of Viscous flow and flow separation.
Old 23rd Dec 2007, 16:58
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Genghis the Engineer
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A friend of mine does this sort of modelling for a living, and he's very good at it.

But, from a chat with him recently, to do a combined flow / thermodynamic / aeroelastic analysis of a single stage of a (gas turbine engine) compressor, at a single flow condition, using a 256 node computer cluster dedicated to this sort of task - would take about 3 days of continuous running, after a few weeks of data input.

Multiply that by the number of stages, and the number of flow conditions - and you get into a massive amount of computing time and power. And this is to analyse something that's already been designed! Now multiply it all by the number of design iterations required to get it right, and you start to understand why we experimentalists, not to mention hair-a***d old fashioned designers with 30+ years of relevant experience, are likely to remain in gainful employment for the foreseeable future!

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