Strategies for tackling the computational cost of modeling reacting fluids and related problems

ME590 Seminar Speaker Dr. Kyle Niemeyer

Bio: Dr. Kyle Niemeyer is Associate Professor and Welty Faculty Fellow in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 2013. Dr. Niemeyer’s research focuses on computational modeling of reacting and non-reacting fluid flows, with a particular interest in numerical methods and high-performance computing. He is also an ardent advocate of open science, and serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of Open Source Software. He is currently working as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the the Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization Office at the US Department of Energy.

Additional Information:

Abstract: Accurate simulations of combustion and reacting fluid flows require complex, multi-step chemical kinetic models for describing the coupled chemical reactions. These models are often large and mathematically stiff, and contribute to the overall high computational expense of simulating practical phenomena relevant to energy, transportation, and aerospace applications. In this talk, I will introduce these issues, summarize the state-of-the-art in methods used to reduce computational costs, and describe some recent contributions from my group on adaptive preconditioning to accelerate implicit integration of stiff chemical kinetics. I will discuss how these developments, and others, are available in the open-source library Cantera. Finally, I will discuss how my group has extended strategies and methods from combustion modeling to other domains such as modeling of neutron transport and ocean biogeochemistry.