Preconference Short Courses

There are seven short courses being offered on October 13, 2008. There is no charge for these short courses; however, it is requested that you sign up for the course or courses you plan to attend when you register for the conference. Click on the name of the course to learn more about its content.

Short Course #1: Overflow Class
Short Course #2: An Introduction to Suggar++
Short Course #3: An Overture Tutorial: An Introduction to Grid Generation and PDE Solvers
Short Course #4: Overset Grid Generation Using OVERGRID and the Chimera Grid Tools Script Library
Short Course #5: What's New in Pointwise's Meshing Software
Short Course #6: Postprocessing Large Scale Overset Solutions using Fieldview
Short Course #7: Advanced Visualization of Computational Physics Data using TECPLOT

Short Course #1: Overflow Class

An eight-hour course offered in the Applied Science Building (ASB) auditorium
Instructors: Pieter Buning (NASA/LaRC) and Bobby Nichols (UAB)

Surface Ship Appendages

Synopsis: The objective of this class is to provide the CFD practitioner with a working knowledge of the models and methods available in the latest release of the OVERFLOW 2.1 overset structured grid Navier-Stokes code. Both the flow solver and the moving grid capabilities contained in OVERFLOW 2.1 will be discussed. Emphasis will be given to recent upgrades to the software. The OVERFLOW 2.1 software is ITAR restricted. The code is available to the U. S. government and industry and is distributed by NASA.

Proposed Outline:

• Beginner's Guide (I've got my grid, now what?)
• What to do with all those options?
  • Turbulence model
  • Right-hand side
  • Left-hand side
  • Boundary conditions
• Time-Accuracy (and Low-Mach Preconditioning)
  • How to run
  • Unsteady data extraction
  • Moving body problems
• Parallelization
  • Hardware matters (but it will be different next year)
  • MPI vs. OpenMP
  • Convergence issues

Total class time will be eight hours divided into morning and afternoon sessions with an hour break for lunch.

Short Course #2: An Introduction to Suggar++

Space is limited.
A four-hour course offered in the morning at Hammond Building room 316
Instructors: Ralph Noack and David Boger (Penn State Applied Research Lab)

This short course will provide an introduction to the Suggar++ overset grid assembly tool. Suggar++ is a completely new code being developed from scratch to replace the capability provided by the existing Suggar code. A new hole cutting approach has been developed and will be presented along with various other details of the approach. Input parameters will be discussed and illustrated with example problems. If time permits a hands-on portion of the class will permit users to try Suggar++ on their own geometries. This will be a Beta release of the software with significant, but not full, functionality. Attendees should be familiar with the overset approach and hopefully have some experience with Pegasus5 or Suggar. Linux workstations with Suggar++ and Gviz installed will be used for the class.

Short Course #3: An Overture Tutorial: An Introduction to Grid Generation and PDE Solvers

Space is limited.
A two-hour course offered in the afternoon at Hammond Building Room 316

Instructors: Bill Henshaw and Kyle Chand

This course introduces the mesh generation tools and PDE solvers available from the Overture project.  The first part of the course provides an overview of Overture as well as some hands on experience with our interactive mesh generation tools.  Tutorial attendees will learn how to build component and overlapping grids with "ogen"; we will also demonstrate mesh generation from CAD data via IGES files. The tutorial's second half focuses on using some of the PDE solvers available from our project.  Grids generated in the first part of the class are used as input to the incompressible Navier-Stokes solver ("cgins"), compressible Navier-Stokes solver ("cgcns") and, time permitting, the multi-physics solver ("cgmp"). LLNL-ABS-402685

Short Course #4: Overset Grid Generation Using OVERGRID and the Chimera Grid Tools Script Library

Space is limited.
A two-hour course offered in the afternoon at Osmond Building Room 216

Instructor: William M. Chan (NASA Ames Research Center)

This course will provide a brief introduction to the Chimera Grid Tools (CGT) software package. A quick demonstration of the basic features of the OVERGRID graphical interface will be given, followed by highlights on more recent additions, including the CAPRI CAD interface. A demonstration of grid generation script development using the CGT script library will also be given. If time permits, a sneak demo of the new OVERSMART postprocessing tool will be shown.

Short Course #5: What's New in Pointwise's Meshing Software

Space is limited.
A two-hour course offered in the morning at Osmond Building Room 216

Instructors: Carolyn Dear and John Chawner

This  seminar will include presentation and demonstration of the latest capabilities of Pointwise's meshing software products, Gridgen and Pointwise. One area of focus will be anisotropic tetrahedral extrusion, a relatively new technique in Gridgen for rapid generation of hybrid meshes consisting of high-quality high-aspect ratio tetrahedra (and their eventual combination into prisms). Gridgen's solid modeling capability will also be presented. The latest additions to Pointwise, our next generation meshing software, will be demonstrated, including the many new interface techniques that automate and simplify the meshing process.

Short Course #6: Postprocessing Large Scale Overset Solutions using FieldView

Space is limited.
A two-hour course offered in the afternoon at Osmond Building Room 216

Instructor: Dr. Christopher Stone (Intelligent Light Applied Research Group)

Dr. Stone will present postprocessing techniques that utilize various features of FieldView to enable the analysis and postprocessing of large-scale, time-dependent, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data sets. In particular, he will present methods that utilize parallel computing capabilities in FieldView and how to make effective use of these tools at the DoD MSRC, the NSF TeraGrid, and NASA's NAS facility.
 

Short Course #7: Advanced Visualization of Computational Physics Data using TECPLOT

Space is limited.
A two-hour course offered in the afternoon at Osmond Building Room 216

Instructor: Jim Carson (Tecplot)

The first hour of this course will walk students through an external flow scenario using the Tecplot 360 CFD visualization tool. The exercise will demonstrate how to display pressure on an airplane wing, and how to compare measured and simulated data on a two-dimensional projection plane. Students will use several features to create this plot, including the PLOT3D loader, the Calculate Variables option, contour legends, a 2D projected plane, and a line legend. The second hour will be devoted to more advanced "free-form" activities during which students can discuss specific topics and scenarios.