Networked agents for scientific computing

Ideally, a designer would change some aspect of the engine and then run a simulation to see how the change affects the performance, cost, durability, and so forth. Such a simple approach will be infeasible for the foreseeable future because the complete simulation of an engine design requires days, weeks or even years on petaflops class computing systems. Thus the design process and simulation software must be configurable so that a simulation can focus on particular aspects of the engine. For example, in designing a new turbine blade (they do not all have the same shape) one might (a) model the blade itself very accurately, (b) model the air flow field and structure near the blade with moderate accuracy, (c) roughly model the air flow fields and structures further away from the blade, and (d) model the remainder of the engine by fixed boundary conditions surrounding the focal area of this particular simulation. Step (d), of course, removes over 99% of the parts and phenomena from this particular simulation, making it feasible to explore many design parameter effects quickly. As a new engine design evolves and matures, the focus of such simulations is enlarged, first bringing several new parts together, then dozens or hundreds of parts, then complete subassemblies, 48