Toward a New Fluid Dynamics Software Infrastructure (FDSI)
The University of Colorado Boulder has been awarded an NSF collaborative research grant to lead the conceptualization of a Fluid Dynamics Software Infrastructure (FDSI) with input from the broader computational fluid dynamics research community. Fluid dynamics is a broad field spanning science and engineering domains including climate, environment, health, transportation, propulsion, and power generation from conventional, alternative, and nuclear sources. By engaging a wide range of experts, FDSI will develop a rich and extensible set of software that can be applied with a wide range of CFD codes to define, solve, and analyze both computational and experimental data.
The conceptualized institute will provide many benefits to the research community and lower or eliminate the barriers to the adoption powerful simulation, data, and analysis resources. To do so, FDSI will connect the best research in fluid dynamics to the best research in data science/analytics within a highly sustainable software development environment. Specifically, FDSI will:
- Enhance dissemination of fluid dynamics data resources and advances in CFD modeling
- Facilitate research collaboration-- especially between computational and experimental researchers
- Enable detailed comparisons among different data sources, and detailed validation of computational models
- Ease the use of advanced CFD models, methods, and codes in new and complex applications
- Facilitate advanced analytics, such as uncertainty quantification, data compression and optimization
- Provide students access to advanced CFD and data resources to enhance both graduate and undergraduate education
- Improve the sustainability of current and future CFD software, and facilitate the management of the growing body of fluid dynamics data sets
The conceptualization of FDSI is funded through the Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation program at the National Science Foundation. This program is focused on realizing a portion of the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering vision and catalyzing new thinking, paradigms and practices in science and engineering. The objective of the conceptualization is to establish FDSI as an NSF-funded Scientific Software Innovation Institute alongside the two current institutes, the Chemical and Materials Research Software Institute and the Science Gateway Community Institute.