(Feb. 6) Today, ManufacturingHUB.org launches the CFD App Competition to develop a collection of easy-to-use simulation capabilities for computational fluid dynamics, as has been pioneered here by the Manifold Flow Predictor app powered by OpenFOAM® and Paraview. The ManufacturingHUB CFD Application Competition is an opportunity to bring your CFD solver to a large new group of users.
Purdue University's ManufacturingHUB.org is serves small- to medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) that could use high-performance computing and simulation to innovate new products but are not doing so because of barriers including the cost of commercial software licenses, the cost of powerful computers and the staff to manage them, and the difficulty of learning to use complex simulation tools.
ManufacturingHUB.org is powered by Purdue University's open source HUBzero® platform for scientific collaboration. HUBzero lets users run hub-hosted, i.e., published, applications seamlessly from start to finish on cloud computing resources entirely from an interactive, graphical user interface presented within their web browser. HUBzero server-side computing means that there is nothing for your users to download and install, they need only a simple client and browser to access your software, and by default they will run the current version of your software (earlier versions may be kept available as desired).
HUBzero was built by the National Science Foundation funded nanoHUB.org project, which supports the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative. In the most recent 12 months, nanoHUB has served 195,000 users with educational materials from leading nanotechnology researchers and has provided cloud computing resources for 379,000 runs of 230 applications that simulate nanoscale phenomena. nanoUB resources have been used in over 500 higher education classrooms and are cited in over 700 papers in the scientific literature.
ManufacturingHUB is currently funded by the National Science Foundation and is a member of the National Digital Manufacturing and Engineering Consortium (NDEMC), which is funded by U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration and Proctor & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, John Deere, and GE Energy to pioneer sustainable delivery of high performance computing and simulation to SMMs that could benefit from access to such computing but, for a variety of reasons, do not have such access.
The open source Rappture Toolkit developed at Purdue makes building app interfaces easy.
The results of this App Competition will be an important part of the solution for SMMs. Apps make powerful simulation programs much easier to use. Try using Manifold Flow Predictor with its default inputs and compare that experience with the complexity of solving the same problem using OpenFOAM and Paraview directly. ManufacturingHUB.org lets designers and engineers access high-performance computers and software for product design and process simulation as easily as using a web browser. This combination will drive new innovation and competitiveness for US manufacturing.
I hope that you will publish your solver on ManufacturingHUB and expose it to many new users. I encourage you to go further and develop applications in the style of Manifold Flow Predictor for your solver and encourage others to do so as well. Competition categories will include: CFD Solver with the most Apps, Most widely used App (number of users) and most widely used solver (total users across all apps). Results will be reported on a regular basis throughout 2012.
To get started, see the information on the Publish Your Program page. Once your solver is published, Apps for as many valuable uses as you and your users can imagine are possible. A marketplace of these applications, serving SMMs, comprising an inviting gateway to your solver, and becoming a new source of sustainability for your solver can be built.
If you have questions please ask them right here on ManufacturingHUB.org and the answers will be posted to a growing FAQ. If you wish a private answer, write to me directly.
I hope that you will deploy your solver on ManufacturingHUB and encourage the development of many Apps for it. Doing so will increase dramatically the value of your solver.
Kind regards,
George
George B. Adams III, Ph.D.
Director, ManufacturingHUB.org
Deputy Director, nanoHUB.org
Purdue University
1205 West State Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2057
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phone +1.765.494.2698
