SimTech Talk on "Continuous and Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Methods for Incompressible Flow" (Catherine Mavriplis, University of Ottawa, Canada)

We cordially invite you to an in-person SimTech talk by

Catherine Mavriplis,
(NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering (2011-2021) and Professor at University of Ottawa, Canada)

on

"Continuous and Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Methods  for Incompressible Flow"

High order spectral methods are preferred for high precision calculations of incompressible flows especially those transitioning to turbulence, however they are computationally expensive and present challenges for complex geometries. This seminar will describe recent efforts to reduce these disadvantages and broaden the range of applicability of the spectral element method. We present aerodynamics results calculated with the continuous Galerkin spectral element open source code Nek5000 for a high lift airfoil and an iced airfoil, to understand transition mechanisms in these contexts, but also to push Nek5000’s limits of Reynolds numbers and complexity of geometry including roughness. We also present parallel implementations of the hp-adaptive discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method on high performance CPU and GPU platforms. A space filling Hilbert curve is used to order elements to preserve locality during the adaptive process, benefiting load balancing. Weak and strong scaling tests on both CPUs and GPUs are presented, showing good performance on cases with over one million elements on up to 16,384 CPUs, and over two hundred thousand elements on up to 64 GPUs.

Catherine Mavriplis is Full Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Ottawa. Her specialty is high order numerical methods for aerodynamics simulations. Dr. Mavriplis is also dedicated to research and program development in support of women in science and engineering. She held the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering from 2011 to 2021, a program that aims to recruit, retain and advance women to leadership. Dr. Mavriplis holds an Honours Bachelor’s Degree of Mechanical Engineering from McGill, as well as a Master’s and Ph.D. in Aeronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a postdoctoral stay at Princeton, she became professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at George Washington University. She has also worked at the US National Science Foundation, NASA Langley and University of Oklahoma before returning to Canada.  Dr. Mavriplis has been President of the Computational Fluid Dynamics Society of Canada and a Councillor of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute. She has been elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and Fellow of Engineers Canada.