Here, pressure contours show the computed solution for transonic flow surrounding the Shuttle orbiter configuration.
Transonic flow occurs when a vehicle is moving at nearly the speed of sound.
Image by Michael Aftosmis. To test the shuttle designs in the Vertical Motion Simulator, the researchers will merge their flow solutions calculated on Lomax with VMS's existing mathematical model. Merging the flow data with the simulation model, a pilot can evaluate the performance of the shuttle orbiter redesigns with high-fidelity simulations. Planned for release in June to selected government users, the new flow solver will drastically reduce the time to compute flow fields by distributing the mesh generated onto different processors. Aftosmis estimates that an application using the new solver will work five to 30 times faster than Tiger.