Cloud-based simulation of the aerodynamics of automobiles
Industrial test cases relevant to the automobile industry (Volkswagen) have been evaluated on a Cloud-based-HPC infrastructure. These test cases require considerable computational resources. The goal of this Case Study has been to evaluate the benefits of using a state-of-the-art HPC environment and to compare the results of the simulations with measurements made in a wind tunnel. This Case Study has demonstrated that it is possible to find effective solutions via cloud-based supercomputing, thereby cutting costs and improving productivity.
We propose to calculate relevant industrial CFD cases using OpenFOAM with the fortissimo-Infrastructure. The cases are supplied by Volkswagen AG and cover the fields of external car aerodynamics (with both steady (RANS) and transient (DES) turbulence schemes) and aeroacoustics. Those cases require considerable computation resources, therefore efficient parallelization is neccessary. Those cases are already calculated by Volkswagen AG for some configurations on their internal HPC-infrastructure, so we can compare our performance to an existing state-of-the-art industrial HPC-environment and also verify results with existing wind-tunnel measurements.