Lionel Mazzella, Plant Modelling Team Leader at E.ON New Build and Technology, presents a supercomputing collaboration case study around E.ON's use of HPC Midlands to accelerate their innovation. For more information, please see http://hpc-midlands.ac.uk

1. Supercomputing collaboration case study
HPC Midlands launch event
Lionel Mazzella
Plant Modelling Team Leader
E.ON New Build & Technology
20th March 2013

2. Agenda
1. E.ON New Build & Technology
2. Plant Modelling Team
3. CFD projects
4. HPC Trial: Historic
5. HPC Trial: Test Project
6. HPC Trial: Outcome
7. HPC for what?
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3. E.ON New Build & Technology
 We realise E.ON’s cleaner and better strategy.
 Our aim it’s to engineer a cleaner
and better future for E.ON by
delivering world-class solutions
from ideas to reality.
Ratcliffe, Nottingham
 Actively involved on nearly 300
locations in Europe and Russia,
with a total output of more than
60GW. Hannover
 More than 1,200 employees.
Gelsenkirchen
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4. Plant Modelling team
Part of E.ON New Build & Technology’s Software & Modelling Department.
Team of engineers and scientists delivering:
 Thermodynamic Modelling Consultancy (PROATES®)
 On-line Performance Monitoring (PROATES PMS)
 Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
 Various R&D modelling projects (E.g. CSP and Energy storage)
Tertiary
Secondary
Primary
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5. CFD projects: Gas turbine blade heat transfer
Aerothermal Analysis of Heat Transfer to Blades
Necessary Starting Point for Lifetime Prediction
Model Film Cooling
Compute Heat HP Vane: htc
14000
Transfer Coefficients 12000
& Gas Temps 10000
8000
htc
6000
4000
2000 no film cooling
Predict GT Blade Lifetimes 0
with film cooling
-140 -100 -60 -20 20 60 100 140
Potential to Provide Considerable Savings surface distance (mm)
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6. CFD projects: Steam flow behaviour in a steam dome
Looking at impact of power upgrade
CFD shows vortex formation in dome
High levels of swirl induced in steam lines
Leads to steam line vibration problems
Steady-state 21 Million cells. (HP Z800 Workstations)
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7. HPC Trial: Historic
June 2011 First contact with Loughborough University
July 2011 First meeting with HPC Midlands people and look at Hydra
October 2011 Working meeting at the Loughborough University
November 2011 Defining HPC trial scope and project to be used for the test
December 2011 Meeting with ANSYS, licensing support for the HPC trial
January 2012 Meeting with E.ON IT and looking at connectivity options
July 2012 HPC Trial completion
August 2012 HPC Trial report completion
October 2012 Presentation of the report to HPC Midlands
February 2013 Meeting with HPC Midlands, Hera visit and commercial discussions
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8. HPC Trial: Test Project
 Original work was to simulate the dispersion of natural gas from leaks
occurring within a ventilated gas turbine enclosure.
 Work part of an assessment to ensure compliance with Health and Safety
Executive regulations.
 HP Workstation xw8600
 Xeon E5405 CPU, 2 cores
 4.5M elements meshing
 Steady state, complex geometry, simple physics
 340 iterations, around 24 hours to complete
 More than 10 simulations requested for the work
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9. HPC Trial: Outcome
The HPC Trial reviewed a range of configurations:
 Simulations with 24 to 128 CPU cores.
 6 different meshes used from 4.5 to 80 million cells.
 Normalised results for 2010 this gives an equivalent time of 5240 sec.
 HPC speeds-up from 30 to 145 times the 2010 values.
Grid 1 4.5M elements 24 cores
2010 Figure – 5240 sec Grid 2 8M elements 48 cores
The lower this number the better
Grid 3 15M elements 48 cores
Grid 4 25M elements 60 cores
Grid 5 45M elements 128 cores
Grid 6 80M elements 128 cores
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10. HPC for what?
Non-linear models Biggest advantage of the HPC
is likely to be for jobs that:
 Have large parameter
spaces.
 Are time dependent.
Power
 Have complex geometry.
 Have very complex physics.
Partnership
Linear models  A combination of the above.
Solution
Desktop Small cluster HPC
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11. Thank you for listening