A summer program on modeling and simulation at NASA

Located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, the Ames Research Center is one of the most important research institutes of NASA, the US space agency. This summer, fifteen members of the CMAP's HPC@Maths team, including four doctoral and postdoctoral students and six computational engineers, had the opportunity to conduct research at this aerospace center. 

The Ames Research Center studies, in particular, thermal protection systems for spacecraft, which are crucial for re-entry into the atmosphere, whether that of Earth or other planets in the solar system. This is because high-speed entry causes the temperature of materials to rise dramatically, triggering a multitude of physical processes.

Modeling numerous phenomena 

"Designing atmospheric entry systems requires cutting-edge modeling and simulation. For example, several calculation codes provide an understanding of what happens in the atmosphere, but also at the level of the spacecraft. These different codes must then be coupled. This is one of our areas of expertise at CMAP and is the subject of a collaboration with ONERA, the French National office for aerospace studies and research," explains Marc Massot, professor at École Polytechnique and co-organizer of this summer program.

Together with their colleagues from NASA, as well as members of ONERA, the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (Belgium) and the University of Bordeaux, the scientists worked full-time on five research projects. In addition to the code coupling already mentioned, the topics covered ranged from the physical modeling of plasmas created in the atmosphere to new schemes for simulating reactive flows. 

“This exchange strengthens ties with our colleagues from different institutions and raises awareness of our simulation tools and related research,” emphasizes Loïc Gouarin, an engineer at École Polytechnique and co-leader of the HPC@Maths team.

Expertise in applied mathematics and high-performance computing

In each of these projects, the numerical simulation of all physical phenomena is complex and requires innovative mathematical and computational tools. To effectively meet these challenges, half of the HPC@Maths team is made up of mathematics researchers and half of high-performance computing engineers. This atypical organization in the mathematics laboratory landscape allows innovative methods to be implemented through open source software that is directly accessible to industry. The Samurai software, developed by the HPC@Maths team, is a perfect illustration of this.

In addition to this summer program, several researchers were able to give the AMS seminar at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division, which was widely followed by the community and broadcast live in the research departments of industrial companies such as Boeing and SpaceX. 

“This program provides young researchers with valuable experience, while building École Polytechnique's international relations,” adds Marc Massot.

Many interesting exchanges and connections were made with scientists, strengthening existing collaborations, initiating future ones, and paving the way for other initiatives of this type.

*CMAP: a joint research unit CNRS, Inria, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120 Palaiseau, France

**This program was made possible thanks to funding from CIEDS, the École Polytechnique Foundation, ONERA, École Polytechnique's DAER, and the Jacques Hadamard Mathematics Foundation.