Science Centres: Energy

Gerris software makes the finals

Dr Stéphane Popinet, developer of Gerris open source software. (Photo: Alan Blacklock, NIWA)

Gerris software, written by NIWA’s Dr Stéphane Popinet, was recently a finalist in the inaugural New Zealand Open Source Awards. The awards were judged by an international panel, and sponsored by Google.

Gerris is a tool based on fluid dynamics which simulates complex wind patterns. Stéphane has taken 6 years to develop the code, and Gerris is now in use to assess wind farm and micro-scale wind turbine sites.

Stéphane is a big fan of the open source concept, likening it to publishing academic papers. Gerris software has been picked up and extended by numerous other scientists, including US modellers of spacecraft re-entry air dynamics, and Australian scientists modelling drag on aircraft wing designs. Gerris has also been used by French researchers to model fuel injection in car and rocket engines, where the ultimate goal is to optimise the design of injectors in order to obtain lower fuel consumption and decreases in emission of harmful combustion products.