ANSYS and Fujitsu Partner to Accelerate Simulation in the Cloud

By Ishikawa Kyoji, Chiyoda; Hiroyuki Kanazawa, Fujitsu; Wim Slagter, ANSYS; and Wolfgang Gentzsch, UberCloud

Around the world, engineering firms are challenged to provide optimal customer service, while keeping staffing, IT resources and other investments low. As simulation grows as a core engineering competency, it can be difficult for consulting firms to accommodate the dramatic shifts in IT demand that occur. Renting additional server space can take up to a week to acquire the technology; a pace that is much too slow for a fast-based business.

Business Challenges

Chiyoda Corporation, a leading Japanese engineering company, relies on ANSYS Fluent to attack a variety of engineering challenges for clients in the global energy business. While seeking fast answers for customers, Chiyoda’s internal IT resources were too overtaxed to process large, complex simulations quickly. To create a more flexible IT infrastructure — and make the most of Chiyoda’s ANSYS HPC (high-performance computing) Pack licenses — ANSYS introduced Chiyoda to Fujitsu Ltd., a strategic partner offering cloud computing resources and expertise.

Engineers at Chiyoda are challenged to design and run complex simulations that address common customer problems — such as gas entrapment. This means simulating two-phase gas–liquid flows in an energy plant. Images courtesy of Chiyoda.

Chiyoda implemented ANSYS Fluent, ANSYS CFD-PrepPost, ANSYS HPC Pack, Fujitsu Technical Computing Cloud and the UberCloud Experiment Platform. The company deployed ANSYS Fluent in a high-performance computing environment using ANSYS HPC Pack licensing. It ran ANSYS solutions on Fujitsu’s exclusive Technical Computing Cloud and ensured data security and seamless user access by creating a custom, Web-based HPC portal devoted solely to ANSYS Fluent.

Benefits

By using 32 parallel cores, the new configuration has accelerated simulation times by six times when compared to a four-way parallel processing job. Typical processing speeds via the Fujitsu Technical Cloud are two times faster than if simulations were run in Chiyoda’s own IT environment, the company reports, allowing results to be delivered to Chiyoda’s customers quickly.

ANSYS HPC Pack licenses allow Chiyoda engineers to benefit from scalability. For cases that demand less computing power, Chiyoda uses its ANSYS HPC Pack licenses separately, enabling entry-level parallel processing. For computationally demanding projects, Chiyoda combines its ANSYS HPC Pack licenses to enable highly scaled parallel processing, using Fujitsu’s cloud resources.

By leveraging ANSYS Fluent via Fujitsu’s Technical Computing Cloud, Chiyoda’s engineers are able to create robust CFD models that show both flow paths and volume fractions for liquid and gas. Image courtesy of Chiyoda.

“Chiyoda was challenged to complete very large simulations, within short time frames, to meet customer needs,” processing speeds are two times faster than if simulations were run in our own IT environment,” says Kyoji Ishikawa, lead engineering, Chiyoda Corporation. “With an overtaxed IT infrastructure, we needed a flexible approach that would provide extra computing capacity on an ongoing basis. ANSYS recommended that Chiyoda partner with Fujitsu Ltd. to maximize its ANSYS HPC Pack licenses and leverage additional computing capacity. Today, by using 32 parallel cores via Fujitsu’s Technical Computing Cloud.”

This project was successfully conducted on the UberCloud Experiment collaboration platform, which has supported over 170 engineering cloud projects in the past two years.

More Info

• ANSYS
• Chiyoda Corporation
• Fujitsu
• UberCloud