Current Status of CFD Platform —UPACS —

Abstract

Unified Platform for Aerospace Computational Simulation (UPACS) is a project to develop a common computational fluid dynamics (CFD) platform since 1998 at National Aerospace Laboratory. This project aims to overcome the increasing difficulties in recent CFD code programming on parallel computers for aerospace applications, which includes complex geometry problems and coupling with different types of simulations, such as heat conduction in materials and structure analysis. Moreover, it aims to accelerate the development of CFD technology by sharing a common base code among research scientists and engineers. The development of UPACS for compressible flows with multi-block structured grids is complete and further improvements are planned and are being carried out. This paper describes the current status of UPACS, which has succeeded to get better portability on various computers and easily share simulation programs and knowledge among CFD researchers and users. The UPACS solver can effectively simulate flows around complicated geometries with multi-block or overset structured grids using some assisting tools for UPACS. It has been successfully applied to some of the aerospace simulations. These results show good performance of the UPACS solver. UPACS continues its evolution to become a better CFD based tool.