Subsequent to an initial workshop at the IFRF’s 15th Members’ Conference where CFD Benchmarking and Validation was confirmed as a key interest area for Members, the IFRF has sought to facilitate active Member participation in its programme on Validation of Combustion Modelling.

The launch of the IFRF’s online CFD Discussion Forum, which has been timed to coincide with the publication of the outcomes of TOTeM 30, CFD – Simulation of Combustion Processes, marks an important step in this process.

The idea of the Forum was first mooted at a kickoff workshop held at the Technical University of Munich, Germany in June 2008 and entitled “Validation of combustion modelling for practical combustion systems”.  The workshop Chairman was Dr. Christian Mueller of Clyde Bergemann, Germany, and a significant number of IFRF Member organisations sent representatives.  A summary of the day’s proceedings can be accessed here.

The Forum exists as a platform to fulfill specific tasks identified both at the Munich workshop, and at TOTeM 30:

• To gather feedback on a proposed hierarchical validation approach (this is described in the Munich presentation by Parente et al.)
• To identify organisations wishing to participate in a shared validation exercise, and thus to constitute a CFD Working Group

Concurrently two reports are being prepared on the application of the V&V approach to Furnace #1 (FOSper) flame modelling.  The intention is to publish them in the next weeks, together with some new data on oxy-combustion tests on the same furnace.

With the publication of the reports and the registration of interested parties via the Forum into the CFD Working Group, we will be in the position to take this programme to the next level.  Initially this will involve tackling these action points:

• Requesting information from modellers on model types to be used and data needed in order to validate each model/application
• Feeding back to modellers what is actually possible and asking them to confirm if this can be lived with or will be useless
• Organising follow-up meetings to monitor experiments and share experience with validating models using the IFRF data

In the longer term, with the Forum at the centre of its strategy, it is the intention of the IFRF to coordinate the discussion on and the definition of protocols/standards for:

• Experimental data generation
• Data quality verification and validation
• Creation of databases of validation cases
• Validation activities: definition of parameters and model settings
• Presentation of modeling outputs and their comparison with experimental data
• Acceptance/validation criteria

IFRF Members who attended the Munich Workshop have already been registered in the Forum and can sign in with their user names and passwords here.  Non IFRF delegates at Munich or anyone interested in participating in the Forum should contact Tracey Biller here.  A topic thread has already been introduced to get discussion underway.

An undertaking of these dimensions would be inconceivable without concerted teamwork behind the scenes.  Specifically as regards this launch I wish to acknowledge the cooperation of all who were involved in the creation of the Forum and the publication of the proceedings of TOTeM30 – a meeting of seminal importance in taking forward this particular element of the IFRF Members’ Research Programme.