Madison, WisconsinㅡNovember 19, 2019ㅡConvergent Science, Aramco Research Center - Detroit, and Argonne National Laboratory received the 2019 HPCwire Editors' Choice Award for the Best Use of HPC in Automotive. The three institutions were nominated for using HPC and AI to accelerate the design of a clean, highly efficient gasoline compression ignition engine. Representatives from the institutions were presented with the award at this year's Supercomputing Conference, SC19, in Denver, Colorado.

Together, researchers from Argonne, Aramco, and Convergent Science evaluated a first-of-its-kind engine design on an IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer located at Argonne National Laboratory. Thousands of engine design variations were tested in parallel to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. The designs were evaluated in a matter of days, rather than months, using capacity computing assisted by machine learning to further reduce design time. The simulations were performed using CONVERGE, a computational fluid dynamics software from Convergent Science.

"Because of CONVERGE's autonomous meshing, you do not need to manually make a mesh for every design iteration, which significantly speeds up the optimization process," says Dr. Kelly Senecal, Co-Owner and Vice President of Convergent Science.

A number of variables were optimized in the study, including piston bowl geometry, compression ratio, injector configuration, and injection timing. The best-performing simulated engine design was then built in the real world. The engine demonstrated a reduction in CO2 of up to 5%.

"It is an incredible honor to receive this award with our collaborators from Argonne National Laboratory and Aramco Research Center," says Senecal. "The ability to use HPC to computationally optimize an engine design in such a short amount of time has the potential to advance clean technology for heavy-duty transportation around the world."