Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets
Encyclopedia
The Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets (CSAR) is an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
, and is part of the United States Department of Energy
's Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
. CSAR's goal is to accurately predict the performance, reliability, and safety of solid propellant rockets.
CSAR was founded in 1997 as part of the Department of Energy's Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. The goal of this program is to "enable accurate prediction of the performance, reliability, and safety of complex physical systems through computational simulation." CSAR extends this motive into the realm of solid rocket propellant
s, specifically those used by the Space Shuttle
.
CSAR aims to be able to simulate entire rocket systems, under normal and abnormal situations. This involves highly accurate modeling of components and dynamics of fuel flow and other environmental factors. Modeling this requires large computational power, on the order of thousands of processors. Development of the computational infrastructure is critical in achieving their goal.
and is entirely compatible with Adaptive MPI
. Rocstar is currently in its third version, Rocstar 3. Documentation on using Rocstar 3 is available through a User's Guide.
CSAR uses a number of supercomputing resources for their simulations. Along with CSAR, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
is located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. CSAR takes advantage of the computing environment provided by NCSA for many simulations. The university's department of Computational Science and Engineering has a supercomputing cluster known as Turing, which is also utilized by CSAR.
The computation environment used by CSAR takes advantage of work done by the University of Illinois' Parallel Programming Lab, in particular Charm++
and Adaptive MPI. These parallel programming frameworks allow for application development that scales easily to thousands of processors, which allows for highly complex computations to finish quickly. The Run-time system
employed by both Charm++ and AMPI has two primary features that are used by CSAR's software: load-balancing, which helps improve performance by keeping work distributed evenly across all processors, and checkpointing, which allows a lengthy computation to be saved and re-started without having to start over.
Using these highly parallel tools, CSAR's developers have built a number of components which are able to simulate various physical phenomena related to rocket propulsion. Combined together, they provide a complete simulation environment. Below is a list of all the Rocstar modules and links to their respective users guides.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
, and is part of the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
's Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
Advanced Simulation and Computing Program
The Advanced Simulation and Computing Program is a supercomputing initiative of the United States government, created to help the maintenance of the United States nuclear arsenal after the 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing.Some of the program's supercomputers are on the TOP500...
. CSAR's goal is to accurately predict the performance, reliability, and safety of solid propellant rockets.
CSAR was founded in 1997 as part of the Department of Energy's Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. The goal of this program is to "enable accurate prediction of the performance, reliability, and safety of complex physical systems through computational simulation." CSAR extends this motive into the realm of solid rocket propellant
Rocket propellant
Rocket propellant is mass that is stored in some form of propellant tank, prior to being used as the propulsive mass that is ejected from a rocket engine in the form of a fluid jet to produce thrust. A fuel propellant is often burned with an oxidizer propellant to produce large volumes of very hot...
s, specifically those used by the Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
.
CSAR aims to be able to simulate entire rocket systems, under normal and abnormal situations. This involves highly accurate modeling of components and dynamics of fuel flow and other environmental factors. Modeling this requires large computational power, on the order of thousands of processors. Development of the computational infrastructure is critical in achieving their goal.
Areas of research
There are several fields researched by CSAR. Physical simulations are implemented in CSAR's Rocstar software suite.- Fluids and combustionFluid dynamicsIn physics, fluid dynamics is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics...
- The study of how a rocket's fuels are ignited and directed in such a way as to provide thrust.- Multiphase Flow
- Turbulence Modeling
- Multiscale Acceleration (via "time zooming")
- Propellant Morphology/characterization
- Propellant combustion modeling
- Structures and Materials - Analysis of the physical structure of a rocket
- Constitutive and damage modeling
- Crack propagation
- Multiscale materials modeling
- Molecular modeling of material interfaces
- Space-time discontinuous Galerkin Methods
- Computer ScienceComputer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
- Development of advanced simulation and visualization tools- Parallel programming environments
- Parallel I/O
- Parallel performance modeling and prediction
- Meshing
- Hybrid geometric/topological mesh partitioner
- Visualization
- System Integration - Bringing the available tools and resources together in an efficient manner
- Object-oriented integration framework
- Flexible parallel orchestration
- Stable component coupling and time-stepping
- Accurate and conservative data transfer based on common refinement
- Stable and efficient surface propagation
- Uncertainty QuantificationUncertainty quantificationUncertainty quantification is the science of quantitative characterization and reduction of uncertainties in applications. It tries to determine how likely certain outcomes are if some aspects of the system are not exactly known...
- Determining accuracy and confidence in simulation results- Clustering techniques for sampling-based Uncertainty Quantification
Computation environment
Physical simulations are performed using CSAR's Rocstar suite of numerical solver applications. Rocstar was built by CSAR, and is designed to run efficiently on massively parallel computers. Implementation of Rocstar is done in MPIMPI
-Science, information technology and engineering:* Magnetic particle imaging, an imaging technique still being developed* Magnetic-particle inspection, a non-destructive method used to detect defects in ferrous materials...
and is entirely compatible with Adaptive MPI
Charm++
Charm++ is a parallel object-oriented programming language based on C++ and developed in the Parallel Programming Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Charm++ is designed with the goal of enhancing programmer productivity by providing a high-level abstraction of a parallel program while at the...
. Rocstar is currently in its third version, Rocstar 3. Documentation on using Rocstar 3 is available through a User's Guide.
CSAR uses a number of supercomputing resources for their simulations. Along with CSAR, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...
is located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. CSAR takes advantage of the computing environment provided by NCSA for many simulations. The university's department of Computational Science and Engineering has a supercomputing cluster known as Turing, which is also utilized by CSAR.
The computation environment used by CSAR takes advantage of work done by the University of Illinois' Parallel Programming Lab, in particular Charm++
Charm++
Charm++ is a parallel object-oriented programming language based on C++ and developed in the Parallel Programming Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Charm++ is designed with the goal of enhancing programmer productivity by providing a high-level abstraction of a parallel program while at the...
and Adaptive MPI. These parallel programming frameworks allow for application development that scales easily to thousands of processors, which allows for highly complex computations to finish quickly. The Run-time system
Run-time system
A run-time system is a software component designed to support the execution of computer programs written in some computer language...
employed by both Charm++ and AMPI has two primary features that are used by CSAR's software: load-balancing, which helps improve performance by keeping work distributed evenly across all processors, and checkpointing, which allows a lengthy computation to be saved and re-started without having to start over.
Using these highly parallel tools, CSAR's developers have built a number of components which are able to simulate various physical phenomena related to rocket propulsion. Combined together, they provide a complete simulation environment. Below is a list of all the Rocstar modules and links to their respective users guides.
Events
- On 11–12 June 2007, UIUC's Computational Science and Engineering department, home of CSAR, hosted a workshop on Uncertainty QuantificationUncertainty quantificationUncertainty quantification is the science of quantitative characterization and reduction of uncertainties in applications. It tries to determine how likely certain outcomes are if some aspects of the system are not exactly known...
. Over 40 people attended, and lectures were given by Habib Najm and Nicholas J. Zabaras.
- On 13 July 2007, CSAR held their International Symposium on Solid Rocket Modeling and Simulation, which featured speakers from CSAR, Japan's JAXA, and France's SNPE