On the Next-Generation Performance-Portable CREATE-AV Helios Software
The CREATE-AV Helios software is a high-fidelity rotorcraft aeromechanics simulation framework developed through a partnership between the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) initiative and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center (DEVCOM AvMC). Helios integrates computational fluid dynamics (CFD), computational structural dynamics (CSD), and flight control models to simulate complex rotorcraft behavior with high accuracy. Development of Helios began in 2008, with the first official release in 2010. Since then, the software has followed a yearly release cycle, incorporating continuous feature enhancements. Helios is actively used by the U.S. Army to support next-generation rotorcraft development under the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. It is also employed by the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and all major U.S. helicopter manufacturers for rotorcraft design and analysis. While Helios delivers high-fidelity results, its computational cost is significant: full hover or forward flight simulations can require days or even weeks on some of the nation’s most powerful supercomputers. Meanwhile, the HPC landscape is rapidly evolving toward heterogeneous architectures that combine traditional Central Processing Units (CPUs) with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). To address these trends, the Helios development team has been building a new performance-portable version of the software. This version, based on a single-source codebase, is designed to run efficiently on both CPU and GPU platforms. In this talk, we will present recent applications of the GPU-capable Helios for complex rotary-wing configurations, including high-fidelity CFD simulations of the Bell XV-15 tiltrotor during a transient hover-to-forward flight conversion and the UH-60A Black Hawk with blade deformation in forward flight. We will compare performance across CPU and GPU platforms, highlighting significant speedups enabled by GPU acceleration. Additionally, we will discuss performance-portable strategies in unstructured CFD solvers, adaptive mesh refinement, overset domain connectivity, and fluid–structure coupling.
IMPACT
The newly developed GPU-capable Helios software enabled the first-ever high-fidelity CFD overset simulation of the full Bell XV-15 tiltrotor during a transient conversion maneuver from hover to forward flight—an operationally critical regime for rotorcraft. By leveraging 28 NVIDIA A100 GPUs on the DoD Nautilus HPC system, the simulation achieved a turnaround of 1.2 hours per rotor revolution using a 305-million-cell mesh. This represents an approximate 10× speedup over the CPU-only version, which requires nearly 10 hours per revolution on thousands of CPU cores. This breakthrough significantly reduces time-to-solution and enables time-accurate modeling of complex unsteady rotorcraft flight conditions that were previously computationally prohibitive. The capability directly supports DoD mission objectives by accelerating the design and analysis of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift initiative.
PRESENTER
Hosseinverdi, Shirzad
shirzad.hosseinverdi.ctr@army.mil
520-275-7453Analytical Mechanics Associates, U.S. Army DEVCOM, Moffett Field, CA
CO-AUTHOR(S)
Jay Sitaraman
jayanarayanan.sitaraman.civ@army.milDylan Jude
dylan.p.jude.ctr@army.milBeatice Roget
beatrice.f.roget.civ@army.milWilliam Polzin
william.j.polzin2.ctr@army.milJennifer Abras
jennifer.n.abras.ctr@mail.milRobert Trigg
robert.d.trigg5.ctr@mail.milCATEGORY
GPU usage for HPC
SECONDARY CATEGORY
Comp Fluid Dynamics
SYSTEM(S) USED
Nautilus