The objective of MUSICA project is to develop and to setup an open collaborative co-simulation platform that could be used by both academia and industry to simulate separate aircraft components (such as a fan and an airframe) designed by separate entities, in a unique CFD simulation, while ensuring that intellectual property is protected.
This involves code-to-code coupling, communication between two private networks, and co/post processing of the simulation.
The approach chosen in MUSICA relies on the new generation open platform Fidelity (former OMNIS) developed by Cadence Belgium (former NUMECA) for the management of complex projects involving multi-physics simulations.
The application of coupling approach to heterogeneous CFD solvers requires conservative interpolation of the flow quantities at the connection interface between the computation domains, which is a non-trivial task. The complexity of setting up such simulations remains however a delicate enterprise. It relies on the proper definition of the connecting interface between the solvers and on meshes that need to lie at the same geometrical position. Being usually performed in completely different environments, this is seldom the case and the users need to spend a considerable amount of time to fit the meshes at the interface.
From this work, scientists and industrials will be able to:
● couple their solvers to the platform and have direct access to the advanced project management and setup features as well as processing functionalities.
● Instrument their solver with the coupling library, enabling in-situ code-to-code coupling. The co-processing capabilities will be available with little extra effort.
Thanks to these advanced co-processing features the researchers will be able to perform large coupled unsteady simulations and process the results during the simulation, thereby dramatically reducing the storage requirements and communication between solvers.
The second objective of the project will be to extend the platform to the solvers running in different locations across public networks, in response to organisations needing to perform coupled simulations between distributed entities possessing their own tools, expertise and computing infrastructure. Several challenges are associated with this objective and will be tackled within the project:
● Ensuring reliable and secure connections between the remote entities
● Keeping the intellectual proprietary and data confidentiality of the involved organisations, requiring distributed project management and storage.
Through the challenging developments in MUSICA a unique open Fidelity platform will favor the collaboration between heterogeneous organisations possessing their own expertise and tools, thereby bringing CAE simulations to the next level.
