• Dr. Carl Ollivier-Gooch
  • The University of British Columbia
  • Holden Auditorium
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Christopher Roy

The Advanced Numerical Simulation Laboratory at UBC focuses on algorithm development for CFD, with an application focus in compressible aerodynamics.  We are currently working in three main areas: numerical methods for flow solution on unstructured meshes; generation of unstructured meshes; and the interaction between mesh quality and solution accuracy.  We use unstructured meshes to be able to handle complex geometries, and high-order accurate  finite-volume methods to get very accurate answers.

We have a very efficient high-order finite-volume solution scheme for unstructured meshes, and are currently working to extend this approach to turbulent flows around aircraft.  Our work in unstructured mesh generation is aimed at improving mesh quality, robustness, and scalability to large problem sizes (and therefore to massively parallel computer architectures).  Finally, we are developing new analysis techniques to study the accuracy and stability of unstructured mesh finite volume methods, with the ultimate goal of improving discretization schemes, mesh generation, and a posteriori error estimation.

The talk will give an overview of this work, with emphasis on several open questions in error estimation and reduction.

Biography:

Dr. Carl Ollivier-Gooch received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University (1988) and his Master's of Science (1990) and Ph.D. (1994) from Stanford University.  He got his start working with unstructured meshes while a post-doc at NASA Ames Research Center (1994-95), and first started working in earnest on mesh generation as a post-doc at the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory (1995-96).  He has been a faculty member in Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia since 1997.  In addition to his research work, Carl also coordinates the department's award-winning unified second year program, Mech 2.