A system for management of Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations for civil engineering

Sempolinski, Peter; Thain, Douglas; Wei, Daniel; Kareem, Ahsan

doi:10.1109/escience.2012.6404433

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 16 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…These wind simulations are performed using industry-grade Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software, specifically OpenFOAM [1], using a computing back-end which deploys various clouds, grids or clusters in a high-performance computing setting. The technical aspects of this portal are described in [11]. Within this portal, we made it possible to comment upon and critique other collaborators' work.…”

Section: Case Study: Virtual Wind Tunnelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting Collaborative Software Development Techniques to Structural Engineering

et al. 2015

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Software engineering has been fundamentally transformed by a collaborative development model. Facilitated by powerful tools, even a modest software project can benefit from a global virtual community of developers. We propose that the collaborative techniques used in modern software development can also be applied to other fields, such as structural engineering. This requires the creation of editors, compilers, evaluators, and other tools that are analogous but not identical to those used in software. To demonstrate this, we have created a prototype Virtual Wind Tunnel (VWT) which implements the ideas of collaborative design in the context of structural engineering. The VWT allows users to edit structural designs, compile designs into usable models for simulation, perform wind simulations, evaluate the results, and then share and discuss their work with other users. The VWT has been used as a platform for projects ranging from small classroom activities to large scale crowdsourcing studies.

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Section: Case Study: Virtual Wind Tunnelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting Collaborative Software Development Techniques to Structural Engineering

et al. 2015

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Lessons Learned from Crowdsourcing Complex Engineering Tasks

et al. 2015

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CrowdsourcingCrowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed ideas, services, or content by requesting contributions from a large group of people. Amazon Mechanical Turk is a web marketplace for crowdsourcing microtasks, such as answering surveys and image tagging. We explored the limits of crowdsourcing by using Mechanical Turk for a more complicated task: analysis and creation of wind simulations.Harnessing Crowdworkers for EngineeringOur investigation examined the feasibility of using crowdsourcing for complex, highly technical tasks. This was done to determine if the benefits of crowdsourcing could be harnessed to accurately and effectively contribute to solving complex real world engineering problems. Of course, untrained crowds cannot be used as a mere substitute for trained expertise. Rather, we sought to understand how crowd workers can be used as a large pool of labor for a preliminary analysis of complex data.Virtual Wind TunnelWe compared the skill of the anonymous crowd workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk with that of civil engineering graduate students, making a first pass at analyzing wind simulation data. For the first phase, we posted analysis questions to Amazon crowd workers and to two groups of civil engineering graduate students. A second phase of our experiment instructed crowd workers and students to create simulations on our Virtual Wind Tunnel website to solve a more complex task.ConclusionsWith a sufficiently comprehensive tutorial and compensation similar to typical crowd-sourcing wages, we were able to enlist crowd workers to effectively complete longer, more complex tasks with competence comparable to that of graduate students with more comprehensive, expert-level knowledge. Furthermore, more complex tasks require increased communication with the workers. As tasks become more complex, the employment relationship begins to become more akin to outsourcing than crowdsourcing. Through this investigation, we were able to stretch and explore the limits of crowdsourcing as a tool for solving complex problems.

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A system for management of Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations for civil engineering

Cited by 2 publications

References 16 publications

Adapting Collaborative Software Development Techniques to Structural Engineering

Adapting Collaborative Software Development Techniques to Structural Engineering

Lessons Learned from Crowdsourcing Complex Engineering Tasks

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