TOWARD ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY IN COMPUTATIONAL FLUID-DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS

Essential steps toward establishing credibility in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are outlined, and a vision for the process of systematic collaborative validation that is open to public scrutin y via the Internet is suggested. It begins with an exposition of the e lements of CFD simulations and reviews protocols useful for establishi ng credibility. The various sources of uncertainty in CFD, which inclu de the skills of the user, are presented. Lessons learned from collect ive verification and validation exercises done in the past Pre surveye d and lead to our suggestion for a systematic validation process that requires the creation and use of a detailed flow taxonomy for the give n application field. The code validator uses the taxonomy and an elect ronic database to carry out the validation process. This database arch ives but also gives easy access to trustworthy data and allows full pu blic discussion and scrutiny of the information, comparisons, and hypo theses so that judgments and conclusions about the validation may be a ccepted or rejected by the scientific community at large. The taxonomy also is the basis on which the code user transfers credibility from p reviously validated generic flow cases to the simulation at hand.