Development of a Web-based Distributed Computing Platform and Its Application in Evaluating Flutter Onset Velocity

The purpose of this paper is the evaluation of the flutter onset velocity acting on a moving bridge deck section using a web-based distributed computing environment, namely e-WINDS. e-WINDS, an abbreviation of ‘e-Wind flow Investigation & Design Systems’, is a virtual organization supporting CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations for the users who have a lack of knowledge on CFD. The e-WINDS supports CFD service which is composed of pre-process (mesh generation), simulation-process (CFD analysis) and post-process (result visualization), and enables users to conduct the full CFD simulation process on the web. This system also provides the function of automatic parameter sweeping and job submission using the resources of the HTC (High Throughput Computing) environments. This characteristic makes e-WINDS to be an efficient computing system for evaluating flutter onset velocity.