[Home]
The NPARC (National Project for Application-oriented Research in CFD) Alliance is a partnership between the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) and the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) dedicated to the establishment of a national, applications-oriented computational fluid dynamics (CFD) capability, centered on the Wind-US flow solver. Wind-US is a general-purpose, applied CFD tool with a proven track record. Its further development and support is intended to enhance both the military and commercial competitiveness of the U.S., with particular emphasis on the needs of the aerospace community. The Wind-US code has developed a wide following over the last decade, with over 300 governmental, industrial, and academic institutions acquiring it. In line with the evolving emphasis in both NASA and the Department of Defense on the transfer and fostering of advanced technology, the NPARC alliance was formed to meet this need.
The NASA Glenn Research Center (NASA GRC) and the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) formed the NPARC Alliance in response to a national requirement for a productive, user friendly, well maintained, well documented, applications-oriented CFD tool. This working relationship has been formalized through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two organizations.
The Alliance structure consists of an Executive Direction Committee which provides management oversight of Alliance activities, two Technical Liasons who provide technical oversight, and a Technical Direction Committee which is responsible for defining and implementing activities in each of the three primary functional areas of Support, Development, and Validation. For each of these functional areas, representatives from each organization (NASA GRC and AEDC) have contributed to the completion of documentation defining the Policies for each area as well as detailed Plans with a schedule of execution for each Fiscal Year. In addition, there also exists the NPARC Association which is administered independently of the Alliance and provides a vehicle for NPARC users to communicate with the Alliance.
NASA GRC and AEDC are jointly committed to the long range maintenance and improvement of the NPARC flow simulation system, including the Wind-US code. The three main tasks of the NPARC Alliance are user support, program development, and validation:
As indicated under the discussion of the Alliance Structure above, each of the three functional areas of Support, Development, and Validation have established Policies and Plans documents which, respectively, define the primary goals of each area and activities for the current Fical Year directed at implementing these goals.
In order to obtain a copy of the Wind-US CFD code and related software, you must complete the process as outlined by the NPARC Software Release Instructions.
The Alliance seeks to leverage the talents and expertise of government, commercial and academic users. Over the last couple of years, a significant number of improvements have been incorporated into the NPARC code by a variety of users. We encourage you to share your modifications with us. The Alliance can incorporate proprietary modifications into special versions of NPARC so that their use is limited to government contractors for a period of up to 18 months. After this period these modifications will be added to the standard version of NPARC. The Alliance will ensure the compatibility of the proprietary modification with all future releases of NPARC.
If you have any questions or comments concerning the NPARC Alliance or NPARC software, the NPARC support team can be contacted via phone, fax or email: