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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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NASA NTRS1993

Pump and Flow Control Subassembly of Thermal Control Subsystem for Photovoltaic Power Module

The pump and flow control subassembly (PFCS) is an orbital replacement unit (ORU) on the Space Station Freedom photovoltaic power module (PVM). The PFCS pumps liquid ammonia at a constant rate of approximately 1170 kg/hr while providing temperature control by flow regulation between the radiator and the bypass loop. Also, housed within the ORU is an accumulator to compensate for fluid volumetric changes as well as the electronics and firmware for monitoring and control of the photovoltaic thermal control system (PVTCS). Major electronic functions include signal conditioning, data interfacing and motor control. This paper will provide a description of each major component within the PFCS along with performance test data. In addition, this paper will discuss the flow control algorithm and describe how the nickel hydrogen batteries and associated power electronics will be thermally controlled through regulation of coolant flow to the radiator.

Motil, Brian↗

NASA NTRS1995

Computational strategies for three-dimensional flow simulations on distributed computer systems

This research effort is directed towards an examination of issues involved in porting large computational fluid dynamics codes in use within the industry to a distributed computing environment. This effort addresses strategies for implementing the distributed computing in a device independent fashion and load balancing. A flow solver called TEAM presently in use at Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Company was acquired to start this effort. The following tasks were completed: (1) The TEAM code was ported to a number of distributed computing platforms including a cluster of HP workstations located in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech; a cluster of DEC Alpha Workstations in the Graphics visualization lab located at Georgia Tech; a cluster of SGI workstations located at NASA Ames Research Center; and an IBM SP-2 system located at NASA ARC. (2) A number of communication strategies were implemented. Specifically, the manager-worker strategy and the worker-worker strategy were tested. (3) A variety of load balancing strategies were investigated. Specifically, the static load balancing, task queue balancing and the Crutchfield algorithm were coded and evaluated. (4) The classical explicit Runge-Kutta scheme in the TEAM solver was replaced with an LU implicit scheme. And (5) the implicit TEAM-PVM solver was extensively validated through studies of unsteady transonic flow over an F-5 wing, undergoing combined bending and torsional motion. These investigations are documented in extensive detail in the dissertation, 'Computational Strategies for Three-Dimensional Flow Simulations on Distributed Computing Systems', enclosed as an appendix.

Sankar, Lakshmi N.↗

NASA NTRS1995

Searching for patterns in remote sensing image databases using neural networks

We have investigated a method, based on a successful neural network multispectral image classification system, of searching for single patterns in remote sensing databases. While defining the pattern to search for and the feature to be used for that search (spectral, spatial, temporal, etc.) is challenging, a more difficult task is selecting competing patterns to train against the desired pattern. Schemes for competing pattern selection, including random selection and human interpreted selection, are discussed in the context of an example detection of dense urban areas in Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery. When applying the search to multiple images, a simple normalization method can alleviate the problem of inconsistent image calibration. Another potential problem, that of highly compressed data, was found to have a minimal effect on the ability to detect the desired pattern. The neural network algorithm has been implemented using the PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) library and nearly-optimal speedups have been obtained that help alleviate the long process of searching through imagery.

Paola, Justin D.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Methodologies and systems for heterogeneous concurrent computing

Heterogeneous concurrent computing is gaining increasing acceptance as an alternative or complementary paradigm to multiprocessor-based parallel processing as well as to conventional supercomputing. While algorithmic and programming aspects of heterogeneous concurrent computing are similar to their parallel processing counterparts, system issues, partitioning and scheduling, and performance aspects are significantly different. In this paper, we discuss critical design and implementation issues in heterogeneous concurrent computing, and describe techniques for enhancing its effectiveness. In particular, we highlight the system level infrastructures that are required, aspects of parallel algorithm development that most affect performance, system capabilities and limitations, and tools and methodologies for effective computing in heterogeneous networked environments. We also present recent developments and experiences in the context of the PVM system and comment on ongoing and future work.

Sunderam, V. S.↗

NASA NTRS1995

Nonlinear Fluid Computations in a Distributed Environment

The performance of a loosely and tightly-coupled workstation cluster is compared against a conventional vector supercomputer for the solution the Reynolds- averaged Navier-Stokes equations. The application geometries include a transonic airfoil, a tiltrotor wing/fuselage, and a wing/body/empennage/nacelle transport. Decomposition is of the manager-worker type, with solution of one grid zone per worker process coupled using the PVM message passing library. Task allocation is determined by grid size and processor speed, subject to available memory penalties. Each fluid zone is computed using an implicit diagonal scheme in an overset mesh framework, while relative body motion is accomplished using an additional worker process to re-establish grid communication.

Atwood, Christopher A.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Air Traffic Complexity Measurement Environment (ACME): Software User's Guide

A user's guide for the Air Traffic Complexity Measurement Environment (ACME) software is presented. The ACME consists of two major components, a complexity analysis tool and user interface. The Complexity Analysis Tool (CAT) analyzes complexity off-line, producing data files which may be examined interactively via the Complexity Data Analysis Tool (CDAT). The Complexity Analysis Tool is composed of three independently executing processes that communicate via PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) and Unix sockets. The Runtime Data Management and Control process (RUNDMC) extracts flight plan and track information from a SAR input file, and sends the information to GARP (Generate Aircraft Routes Process) and CAT (Complexity Analysis Task). GARP in turn generates aircraft trajectories, which are utilized by CAT to calculate sector complexity. CAT writes flight plan, track and complexity data to an output file, which can be examined interactively. The Complexity Data Analysis Tool (CDAT) provides an interactive graphic environment for examining the complexity data produced by the Complexity Analysis Tool (CAT). CDAT can also play back track data extracted from System Analysis Recording (SAR) tapes. The CDAT user interface consists of a primary window, a controls window, and miscellaneous pop-ups. Aircraft track and position data is displayed in the main viewing area of the primary window. The controls window contains miscellaneous control and display items. Complexity data is displayed in pop-up windows. CDAT plays back sector complexity and aircraft track and position data as a function of time. Controls are provided to start and stop playback, adjust the playback rate, and reposition the display to a specified time.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1996

Research in Parallel Algorithms and Software for Computational Aerosciences

Phase 1 is complete for the development of a computational fluid dynamics CFD) parallel code with automatic grid generation and adaptation for the Euler analysis of flow over complex geometries. SPLITFLOW, an unstructured Cartesian grid code developed at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, has been modified for a distributed memory/massively parallel computing environment. The parallel code is operational on an SGI network, Cray J90 and C90 vector machines, SGI Power Challenge, and Cray T3D and IBM SP2 massively parallel machines. Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is the message passing protocol for portability to various architectures. A domain decomposition technique was developed which enforces dynamic load balancing to improve solution speed and memory requirements. A host/node algorithm distributes the tasks. The solver parallelizes very well, and scales with the number of processors. Partially parallelized and non-parallelized tasks consume most of the wall clock time in a very fine grain environment. Timing comparisons on a Cray C90 demonstrate that Parallel SPLITFLOW runs 2.4 times faster on 8 processors than its non-parallel counterpart autotasked over 8 processors.

Domel, Neal D.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Parallel NPARC: Implementation and Performance

Version 3 of the NPARC Navier-Stokes code includes support for large-grain (block level) parallelism using explicit message passing between a heterogeneous collection of computers. This capability has the potential for significant performance gains, depending upon the block data distribution. The parallel implementation uses a master/worker arrangement of processes. The master process assigns blocks to workers, controls worker actions, and provides remote file access for the workers. The processes communicate via explicit message passing using an interface library which provides portability to a number of message passing libraries, such as PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). A Bourne shell script is used to simplify the task of selecting hosts, starting processes, retrieving remote files, and terminating a computation. This script also provides a simple form of fault tolerance. An analysis of the computational performance of NPARC is presented, using data sets from an F/A-18 inlet study and a Rocket Based Combined Cycle Engine analysis. Parallel speedup and overall computational efficiency were obtained for various NPARC run parameters on a cluster of IBM RS6000 workstations. The data show that although NPARC performance compares favorably with the estimated potential parallelism, typical data sets used with previous versions of NPARC will often need to be reblocked for optimum parallel performance. In one of the cases studied, reblocking increased peak parallel speedup from 3.2 to 11.8.

Townsend, S. E.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Research in Parallel Algorithms and Software for Computational Aerosciences

Phase I is complete for the development of a Computational Fluid Dynamics parallel code with automatic grid generation and adaptation for the Euler analysis of flow over complex geometries. SPLITFLOW, an unstructured Cartesian grid code developed at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, has been modified for a distributed memory/massively parallel computing environment. The parallel code is operational on an SGI network, Cray J90 and C90 vector machines, SGI Power Challenge, and Cray T3D and IBM SP2 massively parallel machines. Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is the message passing protocol for portability to various architectures. A domain decomposition technique was developed which enforces dynamic load balancing to improve solution speed and memory requirements. A host/node algorithm distributes the tasks. The solver parallelizes very well, and scales with the number of processors. Partially parallelized and non-parallelized tasks consume most of the wall clock time in a very fine grain environment. Timing comparisons on a Cray C90 demonstrate that Parallel SPLITFLOW runs 2.4 times faster on 8 processors than its non-parallel counterpart autotasked over 8 processors.

Domel, Neal D.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Heterogeneous Distributed Computing for Computational Aerosciences

The research supported under this award focuses on heterogeneous distributed computing for high-performance applications, with particular emphasis on computational aerosciences. The overall goal of this project was to and investigate issues in, and develop solutions to, efficient execution of computational aeroscience codes in heterogeneous concurrent computing environments. In particular, we worked in the context of the PVM[1] system and, subsequent to detailed conversion efforts and performance benchmarking, devising novel techniques to increase the efficacy of heterogeneous networked environments for computational aerosciences. Our work has been based upon the NAS Parallel Benchmark suite, but has also recently expanded in scope to include the NAS I/O benchmarks as specified in the NHT-1 document. In this report we summarize our research accomplishments under the auspices of the grant.

Sunderam, Vaidy S.↗

NASA NTRS1999

3D Multistage Simulation of Each Component of the GE90 Turbofan Engine

A 3D multistage simulation of each component of the GE90 Turbofan engine has been made. This includes 49 blade rows. A coupled simulation of all blade rows will be made very soon. The simulation is running using two levels of parallelism. The first level is on a blade row basis with information shared using files. The second level is using a grid domain decomposition with information shared using MPI. Timings will be shown for running on the SP2, an SGI Origin and a distributed system of HP workstations. On the HP workstations, the CHIMP version of MPI is used, with queuing supplied by LSF (Load Sharing Facility). A script-based control system is used to ensure reliability. An MPEG movie illustrating the flow simulation of the engine has been created using PV3, a parallel visualization library created by Bob Haimes of MIT. PVM is used to create a virtual machine from 10 HP workstations and display on an SGI workstation. A representative component simulation will be compared to rig data to demonstrate its usefulness in turbomachinery design and analysis.

Turner, Mark↗

NASA NTRS1999

Parallelizing OVERFLOW: Experiences, Lessons, Results

The computer code OVERFLOW is widely used in the aerodynamic community for the numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations. Current trends in computer systems and architectures are toward multiple processors and parallelism, including distributed memory. This report describes work that has been carried out by the author and others at Ames Research Center with the goal of parallelizing OVERFLOW using a variety of parallel architectures and parallelization strategies. This paper begins with a brief description of the OVERFLOW code. This description includes the basic numerical algorithm and some software engineering considerations. Next comes a description of a parallel version of OVERFLOW, OVERFLOW/PVM, using PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). This parallel version of OVERFLOW uses the manager/worker style and is part of the standard OVERFLOW distribution. Then comes a description of a parallel version of OVERFLOW, OVERFLOW/MPI, using MPI (Message Passing Interface). This parallel version of OVERFLOW uses the SPMD (Single Program Multiple Data) style. Finally comes a discussion of alternatives to explicit message-passing in the context of parallelizing OVERFLOW.

Jespersen, Dennis C.↗

NASA NTRS1999

OVERAERO-MPI: Parallel Overset Aeroelasticity Code

An overset modal structures analysis code was integrated with a parallel overset Navier-Stokes flow solver to obtain a code capable of static aeroelastic computations. The new code was used to compute the static aeroelastic deformation of an arrow-wing-body geometry and a complex, full aircraft configuration. For the simple geometry, the results were similar to the results obtained with the ENSAERO code and the PVM version of OVERAERO. The full potential of this code suite was illustrated in the complex, full aircraft computations.

Gee, Ken↗

NASA NTRS1999

Aerodynamic Shape Optimization Using A Combined Distributed/Shared Memory Paradigm

Current parallel computational approaches involve distributed and shared memory paradigms. In the distributed memory paradigm, each processor has its own independent memory. Message passing typically uses a function library such as MPI or PVM. In the shared memory paradigm, such as that used on the SGI Origin 2000 machine, compiler directives are used to instruct the compiler to schedule multiple threads to perform calculations. In this paradigm, it must be assured that processors (threads) do not simultaneously access regions of memory in such away that errors would occur. This paper utilizes the latest version of the SGI MPI function library to combine the two parallelization paradigms to perform aerodynamic shape optimization of a generic wing/body.

Cheung, Samson↗

NASA NTRS1999

Automated Concurrent Blackboard System Generation in C++

In his 1992 Ph.D. thesis, "Design and Analysis Techniques for Concurrent Blackboard Systems", John McManus defined several performance metrics for concurrent blackboard systems and developed a suite of tools for creating and analyzing such systems. These tools allow a user to analyze a concurrent blackboard system design and predict the performance of the system before any code is written. The design can be modified until simulated performance is satisfactory. Then, the code generator can be invoked to generate automatically all of the code required for the concurrent blackboard system except for the code implementing the functionality of each knowledge source. We have completed the port of the source code generator and a simulator for a concurrent blackboard system. The source code generator generates the necessary C++ source code to implement the concurrent blackboard system using Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) running on a heterogeneous network of UNIX(trademark) workstations. The concurrent blackboard simulator uses the blackboard specification file to predict the performance of the concurrent blackboard design. The only part of the source code for the concurrent blackboard system that the user must supply is the code implementing the functionality of the knowledge sources.

Kaplan, J. A.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Performance Measurement, Visualization and Modeling of Parallel and Distributed Programs

This paper presents a methodology for debugging the performance of message-passing programs on both tightly coupled and loosely coupled distributed-memory machines. The AIMS (Automated Instrumentation and Monitoring System) toolkit, a suite of software tools for measurement and analysis of performance, is introduced and its application illustrated using several benchmark programs drawn from the field of computational fluid dynamics. AIMS includes (i) Xinstrument, a powerful source-code instrumentor, which supports both Fortran77 and C as well as a number of different message-passing libraries including Intel's NX Thinking Machines' CMMD, and PVM; (ii) Monitor, a library of timestamping and trace -collection routines that run on supercomputers (such as Intel's iPSC/860, Delta, and Paragon and Thinking Machines' CM5) as well as on networks of workstations (including Convex Cluster and SparcStations connected by a LAN); (iii) Visualization Kernel, a trace-animation facility that supports source-code clickback, simultaneous visualization of computation and communication patterns, as well as analysis of data movements; (iv) Statistics Kernel, an advanced profiling facility, that associates a variety of performance data with various syntactic components of a parallel program; (v) Index Kernel, a diagnostic tool that helps pinpoint performance bottlenecks through the use of abstract indices; (vi) Modeling Kernel, a facility for automated modeling of message-passing programs that supports both simulation -based and analytical approaches to performance prediction and scalability analysis; (vii) Intrusion Compensator, a utility for recovering true performance from observed performance by removing the overheads of monitoring and their effects on the communication pattern of the program; and (viii) Compatibility Tools, that convert AIMS-generated traces into formats used by other performance-visualization tools, such as ParaGraph, Pablo, and certain AVS/Explorer modules.

Yan, Jerry C.↗

NASA NTRS1994

A Portable Debugger for Parallel and Distributed Programs

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a portable debugger for parallel and distributed programs. The design incorporates a client-server model in order to isolate non-portable debugger code from the user interface. The precise definition of a protocol for client-server interaction permits a high degree of portability of the client user interface. Replication of server components permits the implementation of a debugger for distributed computations. Portability across message passing implementations is achieved with a protocol that dictates the interaction between a message passing library and the debugger. This permits the same debugger to be used both on PVM and MTI programs. The process abstractions used for debugging message-passing programs can be easily adapted to debug HPF programs at the source level. This allows the debugger to present information hidden in tool-generated code in a meaningful manner.

Cheng, Doreen Y.↗

NASA NTRS1994

High Performance Programming Using Explicit Shared Memory Model on the Cray T3D

The Cray T3D is the first-phase system in Cray Research Inc.'s (CRI) three-phase massively parallel processing program. In this report we describe the architecture of the T3D, as well as the CRAFT (Cray Research Adaptive Fortran) programming model, and contrast it with PVM, which is also supported on the T3D We present some performance data based on the NAS Parallel Benchmarks to illustrate both architectural and software features of the T3D.

Saini, Subhash↗