Imperial College

• Peter Vincent, senior lecturer from Imperial College London, spoke to us about the importance of staying at the cutting edge of technology
• Evaris provided an ethernet switch to the Vincent Lab, with the equipment proving essential
• Technological innovations play a key role in Dr Vincent's research, and the ethernet switch is an important component for the unification of existing hardware

Imperial College London

The Vincent Lab purchased an ethernet switch from Evaris, which will be used as part of an ongoing project to develop new software for the design of next generation aircraft. The switch provided an essential connection to integrate the Vincent Lab's IT systems in order to carry out the research.

His dedicated research group is particularly interested in the development of novel numerical methods that are used to solve fluid flow problems in different aspects of science, engineering and medicine. Its recent paper - entitled ‘The Effect of in Plane Arterial Curvature on Blood Flow and Oxygen Transport in Arterio-Venous Fistulae’ - simulated blood flow in the human body.

The Vincent Lab is developing the PyFR software, which is an open-source Python-based framework used to solve advection diffusion problems. Designed to solve a range of governing systems, the software is created to target a range of hardware platforms through the use of an in-built domain-specific language derived from the Mako templating engine. Its capabilities are as follows:

• Governing equations - Euler, Navier Stokes
• Dimensionality - 2D, 3D
• Element types - Triangles, Quadrilaterals, Hexahedra, Prisms, Tetrahedra, Pyramids
• Platforms - CPU clusters, Nvidia GPU clusters, AMD GPU clusters
• Spatial discretisation - High-order flux reconstruction
• Temporal discretisation - Explicit Runge-Kutta
• Precision - Single, Double
• Mesh files read - Gmsh (.msh)
• Solution files produced - Unstructured VTK (.vtu)

Roberto Monetti, Head of Sales at Evaris said: “With Imperial College London at the cutting edge of technology, software plays an integral role in research and development, so we were happy to help them achieve optimum conditions for their study.

In particular, the Vincent Lab is constantly looking to utilise new and exciting innovations to provide the aerospace industry with next generation tools for design, so its reliance on the very best IT equipment will inevitably continue to grow in the months and years ahead.

Speaking about his dealings with Evaris, Dr Vincent said: “After ordering an ethernet switch from the Evaris website after a quick Google search, I can say I was very pleased with the service. We received the component with no issue, meaning our work was not disturbed. I would be happy to work with them again.”

More information

For more information about the Vincent Lab, or to follow the department on social media, simply use the contact information below:

Website: www.imperial.ac.uk/aeronautics/research/vincentlab/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vincent_lab

Software: www.pyfr.org