190 IEEE TRANSACITONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 36, NO.
4, DECEMBER 1993
The KIVA Story: A Paradigm of Technology Transfer
Dorothy Comer Amsden and Anthony A. Amsden
Abstract- This paper discusses a case history of technology
transfer from a government laboratory to industry, to other
laboratories, and to universities. The technology transferred is
a computer program named KIVA that simulates air flow, fuel
sprays, and combustion in practical combustion devices such
as automobile and truck engines, gas turbines that power jet
aircraft, and industrial furnaces, heaters, and waste incinerators.
The success of the transfer process derives not from presenting
a finished product, but rather from working closely with KIVA
users at every stage of development. By making the original
source code availableto a broad user community, a second avenue
of transfer occurs as university engineering departments prepare
students to enter industry.
INTRODUCTION
C OMBUSTION is a major process affecting our lives, and
it provides over 90% of our useful energy. Unfortunately,
combustion is also the main source of environmental pollution.
Improving combustion processes is therefore of paramount
importance for reducing both fuel consumption and emissions.
The processes involved in combustion are extraordinarily
complex, the parameters numerous. Designers of modem
combustion systems have come to realize that experimental
approaches alone are simply too difficult and expensive to ac-
count for the multitude of parameters involved that are needed
to accurately predict the performance of combustion systems.
Another approach was needed to supplement experimentation.
Recent rapid advances in high-performance computing have
made it a viable alternative to empirical design. The advances
in computing power, coupled with improved numerical algo-
rithms and advanced experimental diagnostic techniques, make
it possible to simulate complex combustion processes, and to
verify the quality of the simulation experimentally where data
are available. The goal is to develop more efficient and cleaner-
burning combustion devices that can be brought to market
quickly and at low development cost.
In this context, the DOE funded a combustion research
program that led to the development of WA, a computer
program that simulates air flow, fuel sprays, and combustion in
practical combustion devices. Over the past decade, a sequence
of three-dimensional simulation codes were developed at Los
Alamos National Laboratory; originally they were intended for
modeling flows in gasoline and diesel engines. These codes
draw on the computational fluid dynamics (0) expertise at
Los Alamos developed over the years for modeling high-speed
Article received July, 1993; revised September, 1993.
The authors are with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos,
NM 87544.
IEEE Log Number 9213893.
0162-8828/93$03.00 0 1993 IEEE
flows that occur in detonation processes. KIVA' features the
ability to calculate air flows in complex geometries with fuel-
spray dynamics and evaporation, mixing of fuel and air, and
combustion with resultant heat release and exhaust-product
formation. Because of its broad range of features, KIVA
has been applied to many combustion devices in addition to
internal combustion engines, such as gas turbines, industrial
furnaces, heaters, and waste incinerators.
In this paper we explore how Los Alamos became involved
with the automotive industry, describe the origins and continu-
ing evolution of KIVA, and discuss the process of transferring
KIVA technology to a broad user community. We also discuss
reasons for the success of the program, some computational
requirements, future directions, and the roles of the different
players, including that of the professional communicator, in
the technology transfer process.
ORIGINS OF KIVA
The origins of KIVA may be found in computational meth-
ods still in common use for nuclear weapons design. In the
early 1970s, Dan Butler and a small team in the computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) group at Los Alamos National Labo-
ratory developed a reactive fluid dynamics program to study
hydrogen-fluorine (HF) chemical laser systems, under contract
to the U. S . Air Force. Several years later, the nation found
itself in the first energy crisis. In 1976 the National Science
Foundation sponsored a meeting in which the participants were
asked to propose ways to make automotive engines more
fuel-efficient and cleaner-burning. An invited participant at
this meeting, Butler realized that the program for modeling
chemical lasers could be adapted to simulate reactive flows in
an internal combustion engine. He came prepared with a movie
of the modified HF program, which he showed at the meeting.
It was evident that multi-dimensional CFD had been largely
overlooked by industry as an analysis tool. Participants thought
it had much promise. Thus began the affiliation between Los
Alamos and the combustion research community.
Under the auspices of the U. S . Energy Research and De-
velopment Agency (ERDA), and its successor, the Department
of Energy (DOE), four cooperative working groups emerged
over the next several years, each with a different focus: direct-
injection, stratified-charge (DISC) gasoline engines; diesel
engines; fuel sprays; and homogeneous-charge engines. Each
group gathered representatives from industry, universities, and
The word kiva is southwestern in origin; it is a Pueblo ceremonial chamber
that is usually round and set underground. It is entered from above by means of
a ladder through the roof. The analogy is made with a typical engine cylinder,
in which the entrance and egress of gases is through valves set in the cylinder
head.

AMSDEN AND AMSDEN: KIVA STORY: PARADIGM OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
COMPUTATIONALFLUIDDYNAMICS-
A HISTORICALPERSPEC~VE
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is based on a set of
equations that were derived in 1827. The Navier-Stokes
equations, as they are called, describe the space-time
variation of mass, momentum, and energy in fluid flow.
Until the advent of supercomputers, their solution had to be
accomplished by sophisticated analytical techniques, which
precluded the analysis of most of the complex scientific anc
engineering problems encountered in today’s technology.
CFD got its start in the 1950s as a tool for designing
nuclear weapons. Early codes were not very sophisticated,
but they allowed weapons designers to understand what wac
taking place at the instant of nuclear fission and to design
weapons that require a minimum amount of fissionable
material. Eventually, codes were created to study other kind:
of flow problems, involving turbulence, material strength,
chemical heat release, magnetic fields, and heat transfer.
The earliest CFD models calculated solutions for unsteady
flows with one-dimensional symmetry. As computers
evolved, it became possible to calculate flows accurately in
two and then three dimensions. The push to solve
increasingly complex fluid flows stimulated the developmen
of supercomputers.
CFD plays an integral role in a number of scientific and
technical fields, including nuclear energy, explosives,
plasma physics, propulsion, space science and astronomy,
oceanography, and streamlining. Today CFD is used
extensively to solve flow problems, such as designing
engines, aircraft, printed circuit boards, ballistic devices,
pumps, and ventilation systems; molding and pouring new
materials; and studying the global climate, astrophysics,
ground seepage of toxic wastes, and nuclear reactor safety.
For more information on CFD applications in mechanical
engineering, see [lo].
several DOE laboratories, and met semiannually. The working
group format and the diversity of its membership provided a
good venue for cultural sharing, which enabled the universities
and national laboratories to learn the needs of industry, and
industry to gain an appreciation of numerical modeling as an
adjunct to experimentation.
The role of the fluid dynamics group at Los Alamos was
to develop a major combustion simulation program, initially
to be used exclusively by the working group participants.
At the time, industry had neither the CFD expertise nor
the computing power necessary to justify undertaking such a
development, but both these requirements could be met by Los
Alamos. With input from the automotive industry, the program
evolved in several well-defined increments. Initially, there was
a two-dimensional program, called APACHE, that had fixed
boundaries. Next, in CONCHAS, the capability of a moving
boundary was added to represent the motion of a piston,
which allowed an air-fuel mixture to be compressed. The third
-
191
stage, CONCHAS-SPRAY, included a sophisticated fuel-spray
model with evaporation. The fourth stage of the evolution
added a full three-dimensional capability; this program became
KIVA.
As we have seen, KIVA did not spring full-grown into
existence. It evolved through a series of programs that were
considered innovative for their time. The initial version of
KIVA, written in 1981-82, was too slow, even on a Cray-
1 computer, to be of practical use for complex problems.
Accordingly, the numerical solution algorithm was revised
and the implicit solution technique in use at the time was
replaced with an explicit subcycling method. In an explicit
method, the new-time value of a quantity such as pressure or
temperature is a function of surrounding old-time values, and
may be obtained directly. In an implicit method, the new-time
value is a function of other new-time values, and in general
must be obtained by means of an iteration.
In addition, considerable effort was expended to tailor the
coding to work in a more optimal fashion on the Cray by
taking advantage of the vector capabilities of the machine.
This meant rewriting much of the FORTRAN code to eliminate
“if”-type decisions, instead using special vector constructs that
would allow the computer to process data in chunks of 64
numbers at one time. This task required a significant amount
of code development time in 1982, but the payoff was that the
vectorized version of KIVA now ran nearly five times faster
than before. With these major modifications, the program was
beginning to run at a speed acceptable to potential users.
KIVA was released for collaborator testing to General
Motors Research Laboratories in 1983. Shortly thereafter
it was released to Cummins Engine Company, Princeton
University, Purdue University, and Sandia National Laboratory
at Livermore. Feedback from this group of “friendly users”
was necessary to improve the program to a level where
it could be considered for public release. The challenge
facing the small KIVA team was two-fold: to demonstrate the
usefulness of combustion modeling to a skeptical audience,
and to continue improving the program.
The first public release [l], [2] of KIVA was made in
1985 through the National Energy Software Center (NESC)
at Argonne National Laboratory, which served at the time as
the official distribution center for DOE-sponsored software.
THE TRANSFER PROCESS
The close working relationship between Los Alamos and
industry, as well as with other collaborative users of KIVA,
was established at the outset and continues to this day. The
importance of personal interaction is indispensable, because
the true technology transfer of KIVA has taken place at the
grass roots level. Working group members communicate with
the KIVA team not just at the semiannual meetings, but
regularly by phone, fax, mail, and e-mail. For many years the
team consisted of a programmer and two physicists. Recently
it acquired another programmer and several physicists who
work on new applications.
The communication process underlying technology transfer
is interactive on multiple levels (see Table I). Users work-
192 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 36, NO. 4, DECEMBER 1993

TABLE I long term was his participation in improving integral parts

AVENUES
OF CoMMUNlCATION IN TECH TRANSFER of the program. For example, he contributed to replacing the
Level of Qpe of Communication People Involved explicit subcycling solution method that had been adopted in
Communication 1981-2 with a new and sophisticated implicit technique that
Grass roots Grass roots Grass roots
visiting scientist sharing of expertise technical staff
allowed a significant performance gain. The benefits of his
telephone conversation questions about technical staff stay were mutual: The Los Alamos team, never more than
technology 2-3 people strong at any one time through the 1980s, had an
e-mail questions and samples technical staff appreciable gain in staff for a year; then Cummins regained
fax samples and problems technical staff an employee who had become a KIVA expert with a wealth
mail requesting technology technical staff
Progammatic Progammatic Progammatic of experience in combustion modeling in general.
meetings directions to take, management and
exchange of data technical staff
proposals obtain funding management
progress reports show progress to management KIVA MOVES INTO A WIDER WORLD
snnnsnr
Formal Formal Formal In 1987, the Los Alamos team presented a paper at the
reports, articles report major technical staff,
Society of Automotive Engineers ( S A E ) International Con-
developments management, technical
editor
gress [3]. It discussed a KIVA calculation of a DISC engine
presentations, poster with a complex three-dimensional geometry, which modeled
share new developments technical staff,
sessions the compression of air after intake valve closure, the fuel
management,technical
writer injection process, spark ignition, and the burning of the air-
vu-graphs show details of work technical staff,
fuel mixture. Calculations were made under three different
management, graphic
artist engine load conditions; the results reported included compar-
videotapes explain work to technical staff,
isons with experimental data of cylinder pressure histories
technical audience, management, technical
sponsors
and analysis of exhaust products. Some of these compared
writer, video specialist
press releases well with experiment, others not so well. More important,
explain work to general technical staff,
public perhaps, was that KIVA revealed flow details inaccessible to
management, public
affairs staff the experimentalists. Of primary importance were graphics that
contracts, licensing establish contracts, management, legal staff,
licenses, agreements illustrated the position of the burning fuel cloud as a function
technical writers
of time, which provided a possible explanation of why the
engine, although performing quite well, had a higher level of
ing directly with KIVA are in frequent contact with the emissions than had been predicted. This was one of the first
programmer for issues involving code details and problems times that such a detailed study had been reported; the paper
with specific applications, and with the physicists for issues received a 1988 S A E Arch T. Colwell Merit Award for making
concerning the underlying theory. The level of contact between an outstanding contribution to the automotive literature.
users and developers is primarily informal (telephone, e-mail, One study alone hardly constitutes comprehensive bench-
fax, with some mail correspondence), although the interactions mark testing. The Los Alamos team and other users worldwide
may lead to formal published papers and presentations. Topics soon began testing KIVA in a broad variety of applications.
of discussion include requests and suggestions for new code Over time a significant number of papers were presented,
capabilities and improvements, contributions of code enhance- each focusing on some aspect of the model and often offering
ments and new features, the reporting and resolution of code extensions and improvements. The model itself was gradually
bugs, and collaboration on joint papers. Industrial managers being made more efficient and realistic, resulting in the public
and government agencies involved with more programmatic release in 1989 of the improved version previously mentioned,
concerns, such as proposals and funding, interact with the called KIVA-I1 [4], [5].
KIVA team leader. Programmatic contact is more formal and Usage and acceptance of the program grew rapidly after
is carefully documented by specific forms, progress reports, the introduction of KIVA-11; today it is in use by the Big
and other correspondence. When the technology is transferred Three U. S . auto makers, Cummins, Caterpillar, many federal
on a formal basis, through articles, briefings, and contracts, laboratories, and mechanical engineering departments at nu-
the professional communicator plays a role in helping to merous universities. In 1990, a patent was issued to General
prepare reports for publication, videotapes, poster sessions, Motors [6] for a high-turbulence piston design that specifically
newsreleases, fact sheets, and presentation visuals. identified three-dimensional computer simulation for making
It has become increasingly common for KIVA users to come the invention possible. KIVA-I1 played a major role in this
to Los Alamos for days, weeks, or months to work directly development.
with the KIVA team. The largest commitment so far was Another area in which KIVA-I1 is being heavily used is in
made by the Cummins Engine Company, which assigned a modeling gas turbine combustors. Under NASA sponsorship,
mechanical engineer to work at Los Alamos for a year. Already researchers are conducting a combined CFD-experimental pro-
a KIVA user before coming to Los Alamos, the engineer made gram to study a variety of combustor designs. Their goal is to
use of the computing power at Los Alamos to further the contribute improved combustors with reduced NO, production
modeling efforts of Cummins. Even more important over the for the next generation of civilian jet aircraft engines.
AMSDEN AND AMSDEN KIVA STORY PARADIGM OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 193

Because KIVA was originally written to run on a Cray A

computer, it contained coding that enhanced its performance
on Cray platforms. Cray Research, Inc., (CRI) realized the
marketing potential for both the software package and Cray
computers. In 1992, Los Aiamos National Laboratory granted
a license for KIVA to Cray Research, limited to Cray plat-
forms. CRI improved the user interface and graphics, giving it
much more of a user-oriented focus for design engineers, and
is now marketing the enhanced version as CRUTyrboKIVA [7].
Another avenue for technology transfer was created by the
growing use of KIVA in engineering schools around the United
States. With Masters and Ph.D. engineering students using
the program for their thesis work, graduates with practical
CFD modeling experience are immediately useful to industry.
Because KIVA-I1 is in the public domain, it is also in use
by the major automotive manufacturers and many universities
and laboratories in France, Italy, England, Germany, Sweden,
Canada, and Japan. KIVA Users Groups publish newsletters
and meet regularly in the United States, Europe, and reportedly
in Japan.
Fig. l(a). A schematic view of a crankcase-scavenged, two-stroke gasoline
engine. This compact direct-injection, stratified-charge (DISC) engine can
KIv~4-3:W E LATEST VERSION deliver more power from a smaller package with fewer parts than the
traditional four-strokeengine that it would replace, and it has the potential for
The two earlier versions of KIVA lend themselves well to simultaneously increasing fuel economy and reducing emissions. The piston
confined in-cylinder flows and to a variety of open combustion is at its lowest position, which permits exhaust air to leave the chamber and
systems, but they can become quite inefficient to use in new air to enter.
complex geometries that contain such features as inlet ports
and moving valves, diesel prechambers, and entire transfer
ports. In these code versions, the entire domain of interest
must be encompassed by a single block of computational
zones, which may require that a significant number of zones
be deactivated. The latest version of KIVA, known as KIVA-
3, is intended to overcome this deficiency [8]. It differs from
KIVA-I1 in that it uses a block-structured grid, which allows
complex geometries to be modeled with far greater efficiency
than KIVA-11, because discrete blocks of zones can now be
coupled together to build the required structure. Figure 1shows
a computing mesh for a KIVA-3 model of a two-stroke engine
and a schematic of the same engine for orientation purposes
(Fig. l(a) and (b)).

GRID GENERATION
AND VISUALIZATION OF RESULTS
As computer simulations become increasingly more pow-
erful in their ability to model complex geometries, there
is a simultaneous need for more sophisticated methods of
generating computing grids (also known as meshes), and for
better ways to visualize the results. In order to run KIVA-
3, a user also must have a grid generator and graphics
postprocessor. Placeholder packages are supplied with KIVA-
3 that will get the new user started and may be adequate for
many users’ needs. In general, however, most users will want
to supply their own grid generator and postprocessor tailored
to their computer system and graphics software.
Grid generation and postprocessing offer careers in
themselves, and indeed many people are working in them.
CAD/CAM methods are being adopted, both to speed up
the grid generation process, and to represent the physical
geometry more accurately. Because it is impossible to
Fig. l(b). A KIVA-3 computing mesh used to model flows in a simplified
research version of the engine shown in Fig. l(a). The mesh actually depicts
the void created by the cylinder walls. What we see is the space into which air
and fuel combine, are compressed as the piston rises, and ultimately combust.
The schematic in Fig. l(a) leaves out the main air transfer port because it
would block the view of the crankshaft.
understand the results of a complex calculation by studying the
millions of numbers it produces, increasingly better graphics
packages with color for improved flow visualization are being
introduced so that the researcher can observe the evolution
of results at the computer terminal and produce a videotape
if necessary.
194 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 36, NO. 4, DECEMBER 1993
COMPUTING PLATFORMS FOR KIvA
As one can well imagine, with such a large user community is required for complex CFD programs such as KIVA. To
around the world, KIVA has been adapted to a wide variety
of computer platforms of all sizes. There is a rapidly growing
interest in the new generation of powerful workstations, which
offer significant computing power at a fraction of the price of a
supercomputer. Among these are the IBM RISC Systed6000,
the Silicon Graphics Iris, and the Sun Sparc. In response to
this interest, Los Alamos is releasing a new generic version
of KIVA-3 that runs on a variety of systems with minimal
modification. Although the generic version is 9-17% slower
on the Cray than the Cray-specific version, it demonstrates
that a single code version can run on many platforms. There
is also interest in putting a number of computer workstations
in clusters to divide the load; the generic version will be the
logical starting point for adapting KIVA-3 to work in this
environment.
Massively parallel supercomputers offer another computa-
tional arena. An effort is currently under way at Los Alamos to
adapt KIVA-I1 to work on the Thinking Machines, Inc., (TMI)
Connection Machine CM-200 and CM-5. Portions of the code
lend themselves quite well to a massively parallel architecture,
but the spray and chemistry routines in particular will require
significant reformulation to achieve acceptable performance
on such platforms.
AND COMPUTINGREQUIREMENTS
PERFORMANCE
We are sometimes asked how long it takes to run a KIVA
calculation. On one processor of a Cray Y-MP8 (which has
eight processors in all), a simple KIVA-3 calculation with only
1000 computing zones might run in one minute. A parameter
study using 10 000 zones that follows the flow of air with
no spray or combustion through part of an engine revolution
typically uses 10-20 minutes per calculation. Increasing the
mesh to 20 000 zones and running the code through one
complete engine revolution might require about 1.5 hours. The
most intensive calculations of high-speed combusting sprays in
much larger meshes may require 10 hours or more. A current
high-end workstation, such as the IBM RISCSysted6000,
requires 4-7 times longer to run these problems than the Cray
Y-MP8.
One measure of computer performance is “millions of
floating point operations per second,” known as megaflops.
The peak single-processor performance of the Cray Y-MP8
is over 300 megaflops, although in the real world a practical
complex program can seldom achieve anything close to this.
A KIVA-3 “cold flow” calculation, that is, air flow only with
no fuel spray or chemical kinetics, runs at 100+ megaflops.
A calculation with spray and chemistry will run at 50-60
megaflops, the speed reduction resulting from the great amount
of time spent in portions of the program that do not vectorize.
The KIVA-3 memory requirement for a 20 000-cell calcu-
lation is typically on the order of a megaword, at 64 bits per
word. Significantly more storage is required for the output files
resulting from the calculation, however. Nevertheless, useful
calculations may be run today on a workstation. A workstation
with 283 megabytes of memory has available 35 megawords
operating in double precision, because a 64-bit word length
put this in perspective, consider a Cray Y-MP8I8-128, which
has 128 megawords of memory. The machine has eight
processors, hence this means 16 megawords per processor.
Running under a typical timesharing system, users have only
a single processor available, and although they are not strictly
confined to its 16 megawords, it can become difficult to obtain
more than 32 megawords when many people are using the
computer at the same time. The foregoing numbers explain
the increasing interest in powerful workstations, which are
becoming cost-effective tools for many CFD applications.
THE KIVA USER COMMUNITY
Organizations expend considerable effort to use the KIVA
program in spite of the fact that it is not an easy-to-use tool.
They know that its results cannot-and should not-replace
experimental work entirely. Nor does KIVA provide precise
answers, because inaccuracies occur in the numerical approx-
imations upon which KIVA is based. The program is also
limited in accuracy by the resolution of the domain of interest,
this limitation being imposed by the computing resources
available. However, KIVA has demonstrated that it can save
designers enormous costs and time in developing a product
because it can suggest optimum configurations and eliminate
a significant amount of expensive experimentation.
KIVA is not unique. Quite a variety of CFD programs are
available today, primarily from commercial vendors, with a
subset of these applicable to combustion simulation. Some of
these programs share features inspired by those that originated
in KIVA, in particular the spray model. One such program
has greater geometric flexibility than KIVA-3, at the expense
of increased internal complexity. The commercial programs
are, of course, sold for profit, and the original source code is
generally unavailable to the user. What is being marketed is
the object code, a “black box” that has been tailored to the
user’s requirements, backed up with service and consultation.
In contrast to commercial programs, the relatively low cost
and ready availability of the source code has created a wide
KIVA user community, particularly through the engineering
schools. What the KIVA user forfeits is service and consul-
tation, because the Los Alamos team has few resources and
therefore must work primarily with its direct collaborators. The
KIVA user also has to contend with a basic research tool that
cannot be treated as a black box. Its use requires a non-trivial
level of sophistication and experience with CFD modeling,
along with a good grasp of spray and combustion theory, but
these same abilities are also required if one is to make the
best use of a commercial program. CRI/TurboKIVA is the up-
market alternative to the public domain version of KIVA, and
comes with professional support services.
A major benefit to those working with the KIVA source code
is that one person designed and wrote all the program versions
of KIVA over a 12-year period. The result is continuity of
logic, ease of readability, and cleanness. In contrast, a typical
CFD program written at a university has contributions from
numerous students over the years and gradually accumulates
a lot of dead wood.

AMSDEN AND AMSDEN: KIVA STORY:PARADIGM OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Fig. 2. During his visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory on May 17,
1993, President Clinton was briefed on KIVA applications and saw a video
of several calculations. (Photo courtesy of James E. Rickman, Los Alamos
Monitor.)
Research versions of KIVA-I1 and KIVA-3 from Los Alamos
are now being distributed by the Energy Science and Technol-
ogy Software Center (ESTSC) at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which
became the centralized software management center for the
DOE in October 1991, replacing the National Energy Software
Center. There are no distribution restrictions on KIVA-11,
but KIVA-3 will not be available for distribution outside the
United States for several years, to give U. S. industry an edge
over its foreign competition.
CONTINUES
KIVA DEVELOPMENT
Improvement of the submodels in KIVA is a continuing
process, particularly in the areas of turbulence, chemical
kinetics, and sprays. Although the automotive industry has
been the driving force behind KIVA development over the
years, new applications continue to arise. Los Alamos is now
collaborating with KIVA users in government, industry and
universities who are modeling complex flows in gasturbine
combustors, advanced diesel and two-stroke gasoline engines
[9], and continuous sprays in industrial boilers and heaters.
Several current projects are being funded by the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA), National Institute of Stan-
dards and Technology (NIST), and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA), in addition to the DOE.
A major thrust for funding in the future appears to be cooper-
ative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with
industrial partners and other national laboratories on a variety
of combustion studies.
CONCLUSION
In April 1993, the Los Alamos KIVA team received a
Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) 1993 Award for Excel-
~
195
lence in Technology Transfer. FLC awards recognize Federal
Laboratory employees who have done an outstanding job
of transferring technology developed in the laboratory to
outside users such as other government agencies or the private
sector. This is regarded as a significant honor, considering the
hundreds of federal laboratories across the United States that
are members of the FLC, and that only 28 submissions were
selected to receive awards in 1993. When the project began,
the KIVA team never envisioned that the program would go
as far as it has.
Hindsight shows what made the transfer process a success:
It was based not on working in isolation and then presenting
the world with a finished combustion simulation program,
but rather on working steadily on a daily basis with the
user community throughout the development process, and
responding to industry needs. In addition, the availability of the
KIVA source code has made it widely disseminated throughout
the university system, so that today students who graduate with
KIVA and other CFD skills are ready to apply their knowledge
in industry.
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12503-MS, 1993.
A. A. Amsden, P. J. O’Rourke, T. D. Butler, K. Meintjes, and T. D.
Fansler, “Comparisons of computed and measured three-dimensional
velocity fields in a motored two-stroke engine,” SAE Paper 920418,
1992.
A. Wolfe, “CFD software: Pushing analysis to the limit,” Mechanical
Engineering, Jan. 1991, pp. 48-54.
Dorothy Comer Amsden is a senior technology analyst at Los Alamos
National Laboratory, where she researches national security issues pertaining
to economic competitiveness, export control, and nuclear nonproliferation.
She has 25 years experience as a technical writer, editor, and translator, the
last 17 of which have been at Los Alamos.
Anthony A. Amsden began systems programming at Los Alamos in 1960,
then moved to scientific programming in the Fluid Dynamics group, where
he has been for 30 years. Over the past 12 years, he has developed and
programmed the KIVA family of codes, an undertaking recognized by a
Distinquished Performance Award in 1990.