EAGER: Impact on Scientific Discovery using Simulation-Based Engineering & Science

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Industry's demand for and use of high-quality science and engineering is not well documented. In some instances it is not well understood. Demand for simulation-based engineering and science (SBE&S), however, has increased due to a variety of factors: economic pressure to decrease time-to-market; multi-disciplinary physics needed to address product complexity and safety; modern production methods and energy innovation and conservation; a general inability to conduct physical prototyping due to miniaturization, complex materials manipulation and safety; and the capability of high-performance computing (HPC) to run models with high fidelity and physical accuracy. In all these instances, SBE&S necessarily relies heavily on academic and industrial research. This research will benefit both the academic and industrial science communities by documenting the use of science by the industrial computational community. Target companies are in the Fortune 50 and have deep experience in SBE&S and invest regularly in academic research. They will each have significant experience in computational modeling using HPC - veritable power users that represent best practices in computational demand for scientific understanding and discovery with an additional ability to convert science into improved production methods and economic development. This research is expected to i) aid understanding of the interplay between federally-supported university-based research and industrial R&D and how interdependent academic and industrial science are, ii) relate HPC efforts within large U.S. companies to university-based research, iii) identify use cases that drive industry demand for high-quality research, iv) potentially create linkages to activities at a number of federal agencies and departments, v) identify practices that could potentially foster alliances in advanced software development, including petascale computing.