A Spanish term, carta blanca roughly translates to "blank check." It also means "a complete authority to act," which is exactly what the Los Alamos team had when they created the software tool kit. Rather than reuse 30 years of Fortran code, Los Alamos scientists started from scratch, creating a completely unique approach to scientific simulation, one that is robust, easy to use and share, and infinitely extensible.
Los Alamos is a world leader in computer-based modeling and simulation. CartaBlanca 2.0 reflects the Laboratory's decades of experience in the field and recently was recognized with a 2005 R&D100 Award as one of the year's top 100 innovations.
The Academic license fee for the CartaBlanca 2.0 development environment has been set at $1,000 per site, with license fees for commercial users starting at $10,000.
Computational fluid dynamics is predicting what will quantitatively happen when fluids flow. Interaction of fluids and solids, phase change, stresses and displacements, and chemical reactions can all be studied in the most precise manner using CartaBlanca.
CartaBlanca is superior to legacy code, and other developments that rely only roughly on component architectures (e.g. C/C++/Python), because CartaBlanca is written from the ground up in Java. LANL's legacy-free Java code means that CartaBlanca is easy to modify and operate. The graphical user interface is intuitive, permitting engineers to jump right in to produce accurate fluid dynamics simulations. Applications for CartaBlanca include fluid/solid interaction modeling, aerospace engineering, homeland security planning, pharmaceutical process design, and simulations for next-generation special effects in entertainment.
Unlike legacy computer simulations, CartaBlanca has built-in thread parallelization so parallel-code CartaBlanca can be easily integrated into shared-memory and distributed-memory machines. The Java code is easily portable from machine to machine.
The types of fluid dynamic effects that can be modeled on CartaBlanca are as complex as the field of fluid dynamics itself. CartaBlanca incorporates true multiphase flow, which allows slippage between phases and multiple momentum equations for each phase. The Jacobian-free, Newton-Krylov solver proves robust, fully coupled solutions to nonlinear fluid equations.
CartaBlanca's most advanced feature is its modeling of fluid/particle interactions using both the particle-in-cell method and the material-point method in combination. This advanced modeling technique allows simulations of effects from fluid blast waves to impellers.
Los Alamos is proud to continue its long practice of moving its technologies from the Lab to industry with CartaBlanca. Additional information on CartaBlanca 2.0 is available online at http://www.lanl.gov/cartablanca or by calling Los Alamos Technology Transfer at 505-665-9090.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.