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Kumar K. Tamma, Fellow

Interdisciplinary Computational Mechanics with Applications to High-Performance Supercomputing

This work constitutes an effort towards the development of computational techniques and algorithms for interdisciplinary problems in engineering (such as thermal-structure, fluid-structure, thermal-fluid-structure interactions) with applications to high-performance supercomputing architectures. With the advent of new computing systems, applications are targeted towards Symmetric Multi-Processor systems (IBM SP and SGI Origin 2000). Computational algorithms and implementation on these scalable high-performance computing architectures are targeted to be based on architecture independent parallel programming paradigms such as Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM), as well as other high-level parallel language paradigms and ompilers such as OpenMP and HPF. Such high-performance computing implementations and advanced simulations of the application developments can be readily extended to other current and future high-performance computing platforms such as the WinterHawk and NightHawk.

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Interdisciplinary thermal-structure interactions, for example, are an important concern to the designer from the point of reliability, durability, and integrity of components/configurations subjected to hostile thermal environments. It is of considerable practical importance to structural designers concerned with problems related to temperature-induced displacements and stresses where a consistency of computational approaches to efficiently and accurately predict both temperature variations and stresses are highly desirable. Interdisciplinary flow-thermal-structural interactions are involved in many manufacturing applications such as those in metal casting and composite material processing. For example, in the composite material manufacturing, the flow, thermal, and reaction kinetics involved during the manufacturing process determine the successful manufacturability of composites. In addition to these manufacturing process considerations, the induced residual stresses determine the part warpage and the structural integrity of the manufactured composite component for design applications. Numerical simulations in a concurrent engineering environment necessitate a need for a common numerical methodology encompassing all these interactions and including the micro/macro integration based on the understanding of the constitutive models dealing with micromechanics and subsequent integration into macroscopic analysis. The rationale and philosophy advocated in this work are based on the fact that a common numerical methodolgoy will be used for each of the interdisciplinary areas via common computational algorithms and consequently implemented on supercomputing architectures with optimal data structures, programming interfaces, and implementation algorithms to obtain optimal performance on the targeted high-performance computing architectures. With the new computing system environments, implementation, data structures, and solution strategies are becoming more specific to the computing environment to obtain optimal performances. Architecture independent paradigms such as MPI provide the required portability across existing and future high-performance supercomputing systems.

In light of all this, these researchers are currently pursuing a number of projects. Initially, these researchers are working on materials modeling and manufacturing simulations to include structural performance by employing micro/macro integration for the multi-disciplinary interactions, development of new time integration methodologies and approaches for structural and thermal analysis, and analysis and modeling of fluid and thermal interactions existing in the solidification processes including the phase change effects that exist in processes such as precision molding and metal casting. Development is being done on a contact model to include frictional effects. Impact and penetration analysis involving large scale structures and large finite element models require a very large memory and computational resources.

A further project is looking at application of the frictional contact model for manufacturing simulations involving metal forming processes and finite element methodology. Analysis and modeling is also being done on flow, thermal, reaction kinetics phenomena that exist during the manufacturing of composite materials in a concurrent engineering environment. Analysis involves macro and micro flows in a network of fibers and analytical prediction of permeabilities by appropriate flow models and fiber networks. This research is also looking at the development of new finite element based methodologies that can be used in interdisciplinary problems and thermal transient analysis involving moving boundaries, removal of materials during processes such as ablation and phase change issues in biological systems. These involve remeshing and adaptive meshing during the analysis.

These efforts focus attention on providing new and effective approaches for not only improving the existing capabilities for applicability to new high-performance supercomputing environments, but also towards providing an accurate understanding of the physics and mechanics relevant to multi-disciplinary engineering problems.

This information is available in alternative formats upon request by individuals with disabilities. Please send email to alt-format@msi.umn.edu or call 612-624-0528.

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