Abstract: Constellation
Constellation is a platform for different aerospace related projects
that need intensive computational power.
The platform supports the efforts of participating projects by
providing Distributed Computing capability using BOINC[1].
Constellation will send work-units of attached projects to
volunteering, idle PCs where the units are processed. The
combined power of all volunteering users will help to solve
important scientific tasks in fields from astronomy to aerospace-
engineering beginning from student up to university projects.
The bottom line is to benefit from the generosity of the volunteers
and to benefit from the accumulation of different projects, like
sharing programming knowledge in distributed computing and
influencing the others' simulation by its own solutions.
The platform is an open space for anyone, who is an air and space
enthusiast and wants to donate idle computing time or even skill for
a sub-project on platform.
Applications for sub-project are welcome!
Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3
Project Implementation
As a DGLR (german aerospace society)[2] academic student team at
the University of Stuttgart, Germany, we set up a distributed super-
computer that offers computing power by idle single desktop
computers of volunteers connected via the internet. This
accumulated computing power is provided to aerospace research
purposes, that universities and private research institutions and
projects normally can't afford. With this approach we demonstrate
the capability of synergetic co-operation of scientists and scientific
enthused ordinary persons.
In contrast to classic super-computers, that have high acquisition-,
maintenance- and operation-costs and aren't state of the art after just
a few years, our Constellation computer is a worldwide distributed,
continuously and dynamically evolving system with high
heterogeneity in which anyone can participate who runs a computer
with Windows, Linux or Mac OS X operating system. This high-
performance is used to solve aerospace related tasks, such as
trajectory optimization (application: TrackJack).
Constellation is in its early public productivity phase and even in
the first month 500 volunteers with 1500 participating machines
generated approx. 1.2 TFLOPS of computing power (1.2*10^12
FLoating point OPerations per Second). It can be assumed that the
amount of participating machines will increase up to 5000 with
about 10 TFLOPS within one year (reference data from RNA-
World, another Rechenkraft.net e.V. project [3]).
The Constellation computer represents a remarkable performance
that is by far superior to high-performance clusters and it increases
daily. In this way hundreds of trajectories can be simulated and
optimized depending in the task's complexity per day. Participating
users can follow their contribution in a clearly arranged
webinterface. Finished results will be send back automatically and
can be archived by the sub-projects scientists.
Operation and maintenance of this system requires expenditure of
time during user support, who post a variety of questions on our
online-forum, so that besides the scientific aspect the project has a
very interesting educational component („science & society“).
Figure 4: Constellation website
Supported by:
Project Motivation
In particular in aerospace sciences simulation and optimization are
major tasks to minimize structure weight, to maximize thrust or to
determine system reliability.
These numerical tasks need a high level of resources and hardware-
support and Constellation platform offers distributed computing
power to projects from professionals to students to solve their
problems in an adequate time without the need to maintain their
own super-computer or cluster system.
In this way it is possible to get access to the needed computing
power by a wider range of researchers who wouldn't have been able
to create those resources because of financial, administration and
operation or because of bureaucracy reasons.
Constellation's goal is to expedite fundamental and applicable
research and bonding researchers with citizen scientists and public.
Applications
There are three applications as sub-projects on the Constellation
platform.
o TrackJack is an ascend trajectory simulation and optimizer for
space-launcher systems and space-crafts. TrackJack's origin is part
of a diploma thesis in Aerospace Engineering at the University of
Applied Sciences Bremen. (Figure 1&2)
TrackJack app is processing test-workunits and will optimize
thrustvector control-functions for ascend trajectories of launchers
small thrustvector angle changes
for trajectory correction
pitch command into gravity turn
Figure 5: thrustvector control-function
and the maximum altitude of HyEnD hybrid-engine sounding
rocket [4] by combinatorical variegating the thrust level at discrete
gridpoints near the speed of sound (Ma = 1). (Figure 6)
Figure 6: thrust control-function
o Extreme Machine's idea is not to create a huge, multimillion ton
exploration rover machine, rather an extremely optimized device,
under the realms of very classical mechanics, to perform specific
tasks. Extreme Machine simulates the rover dynamics. (Figure 3)
o On The Moon aims to simulate the process occurring at moon
near the surface. It is a large scale simulation aiming to create a total
model of the moon system, and to compare it with data collected
from the Google Lunar X-PRIZE (GLXP)[5] mission.
Results
Even though a lot of aerospace projects sound like science-fiction
we lay emphasis on applicable and fundamental work that will
influence current research. So the participants will be involved
directly and success in research can be fed back to the community to
gratify the users. That leads to a good atmosphere and long-time
participation. Constellation as a platform will leave it to the sub-
projects to openly publish parts or the complete results.
Perspectives
Figure 7: CFD analysis with FLUENT
Currently the BOINC infrastructure Constellation uses supports
independent workunits. The above applications respect this limit by
using splitted tasks as workunits that don't rely on other workunits'
result.
But there are aerospace tasks, like in computational fluid dynamics
(CFD), that are only feasible when the complete tasks is solved in
parallel to finish in a decent time. Therefore Constellation is working
to extend the system to combine the advantages of distributed
computing system with that of parallel clusters to create a virtual
cluster where nodes are connected via the internet.
We work together with Volpex Group[9] at University of Houston to
bring parallel execution to Constellation and to other BOINC-
projects, and we examine MAGE[6] of University of Marburg as an
additional candidate.
We want to use parallel execution for CFD analysis.We want to use
OpenFOAM[7] because it's used in the scientific and academic
community, it offers a wide range of solvers and the main reason is
that its GNU General Public License allows the use in a distributed
environment. In comparison Ansys' powerful CFX and FLUENT[8]
programmes use a proprietary software licence that makes it difficult
to use outside the given licence agreement.
For Constellation a CFD application is intended to be used in
aerodynamics and stability simulation, in engine combustion analysis
for micro- and jet engines, in ramjet, scramjet and pulse detonation
engine and rocket engines and motors and many more. We want to
open up this important field of parallel execution for distributed
computing.
Figure 8: possible splitted mesh processing via internet-connected client-nodes
References
[1] BOINC – Berkeley Open Interface for Network Computing - http://boinc.berkeley.edu
[2] DGLR – Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt - http://stuttgart.dglr.de
[3] RNA World – http://rnaworld.de/rnaworld | Rechenkraft.net e.V. - http.//.rechenkraft.net
[4] HyEnD – Hybrid Engine Development - http://www.hybrid-engine-development.de
[5] Google Lunar X-Prize - http://www.glxp.org
[6] MAGE – The Marburg Ad-hoc Grid Environment - http://mage.uni-marburg.de
[7] OpenFOAM – Open Field Operation and Manipulation - http://www.openfoam.com
[8] Ansys – CFX, Fluent - http://www.ansys.com
[9] VOLPEX - Parallel Execution in Volunteer environment - http://volpex.cs.uh.edu/VCP
Andreas Hornig(1,2), Lars Bausch, Sayandeep Khan,
Maximilian Palm, Uwe Beckert, Sebastian de Cillia,
Matthias Fritzsche, S. Müller
1. Constellation, König-Karl-Str. 27, 70372 Stuttgart, Germany
2. corresponding author: constellation@aerospaceresearch.net
http://aerospaceresearch.net
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