Capability Statement

The Birmingham Environment for Academic Research, BlueBEAR, is a large computational facility consisting of: • 3 logon nodes in a round-robin configuration for resiliency • 384 dual-processor dual-core (4 cores/node) 64-bit 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron 2218 worker nodes giving a total of 1536 cores. Most of these nodes have 8 GB of memory with 16 of them having 16 GB • 4 quad-processor dual-core (8 cores/node) 64-bit 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron 8218 nodes with 32 GB of memory • over 150 TB (raw) disk space primarily allocated to BlueBEAR users using IBM’s GPFS cluster file system The availability of such facility makes it possible to perform complex numerical simulations of structure analysis using finite element (FE) codes and fluid flow using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes. Although these can be measured using full scale or model scale experiment, the facility provides an accurate, cheep and fast alternative tool that can be used in the design process and underpinning our understanding of engineering problems. Simulation of the flow around high speed trains has been performed using simpler RANS methods and the state-of-the-art numerical technique Large-Eddy Simulation (LES). LES method provides an accurate solution of the flow both in space and time that is hard to obtain using traditional methods. Also the response of switch rail and the interaction between train wheels and rail is simulated using the FE software Abaqus under different running scenarios.