Pushing turbulent pipe flow to a higher Reynolds number¶
System(s): Polaris · Code: NekRS · Outcome: Success
The ask¶
(This campaign predates verbatim prompt logging — the request below is reconstructed from the campaign's documented design, not a direct quote.)
"Extend the turbulent pipe-flow study (Reynolds number 5200) to a much higher, more turbulent Reynolds number of 19,000."
What happened¶
This campaign pushed the same spectral-element CFD method used in the earlier pipe-flow study to a substantially more turbulent flow regime, testing whether the method and infrastructure remain stable and performant at higher turbulence intensity.
Results¶
- Stable, numerically well-behaved flow advancement at Reynolds number 19,000 on 4 GPUs.
- Throughput of about 26 steps/second — essentially matching the lower-Reynolds-number result on equivalent hardware, showing the method scales to more demanding turbulence without a performance penalty.