Space shuttles, aerospace systems and even the Buckeye Bullet 2 — all of these exciting projects require huge amounts of computer modeling to bypass costly and time-consuming experiments.
Hundreds of Ohio researchers, many of whom are Ohio State faculty, solve some of these problems with the help of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, which has its 20th anniversary this year.
"This is a statewide resource available for the higher education community and the industrial community to do complex calculations to advance science, economic development and the development of products," says center director Stanley Ahalt, an Ohio State professor of electrical and computer engineering.
For example, Somnath Ghosh, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, has examined aerospace systems for the Air Force, thermal barrier coatings such as those on space shuttles for NASA, aluminum sheeting for ALCOA, aluminum castings for Ford and nanocomposites for drug delivery systems. Just one example of results: His findings of better systems of aluminum rolling resulted in approximately $150 million in annual energy savings for ALCOA.
"I use computational mechanics and materials modeling to make those predictions so we can bypass the need for very expensive and sometimes impossible experiments," says Ghosh. "Our computational simulations are like virtual experiments to simulate the real behavior and to incorporate the findings into design."
The center also is a resource for engineering students. Kimberly Stevens, a senior majoring in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, used software there to simulate the shape of the Buckeye Bullet 2, a high-performance hydrogen fuel-cell powered race car. Using computational fluid dynamics, Stevens modeled real-world aerodynamics, and the Buckeye Bullet team built a model for testing in a Penske wind tunnel.
"The experience offered by the Ohio Supercomputer Center has lead to two really cool jobs for me: a computational fluid dynamics co-op position with Honda Research and Development and a computational fluid dynamics research job for the Department of Aerospace Engineering here at Ohio State," she says
Early this year, the state granted the center more than $4.4 million for an upgrade to be completed this summer. Ashok Krishnamurthy, Ohio Supercomputer Center director of research and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, says faculty and students across the entire state can access the center’s systems and network, and researchers there can assist them.
For more information about the Ohio Supercomputer Center, visit http://www.osc.edu.