Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems

Mission

We desire to be the recognized leader in Virtual Manufacturing and Design in the Southeast region of the US. Our goal is to synergize our education and research efforts towards industry in the South with a particular focus on the automotive industry although our technology and capabilities are extensible to other application areas related to national defense laboratories, aerospace industry, and other government labs. The research capability niche is based upon a multiscale methodology that couples theory, simulation, and experiments from the large structural scale down to the nanoscale. This multiscale methodology provides the information for the model that captures the “Cradle-to-Grave” history of a material. As such, our research is relevant to industrial needs and has impact in terms of cost and time savings.

The Computational Manufacturing and Design Thrust at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) at Mississippi State University couples multidisciplinary research of solid mechanics, materials, physics, and applied mathematics in three synergistic areas: theoretical modeling, experimentation, and large scale parallel computational simulation.

Theoretical Modeling:

In terms of theoretical modeling, we develop and employ techniques that capture structure-properties from the quantum scale to the large structural scale.

Experimentation:

In terms of experimentation, we are developing a state-of-the-art facility for applied mechanics, manufacturing, and materials characterization.

Large Scale Computing:

In terms of large scale computing, we employ high performance computing hardware: an IBM x335 Linux Supercluster that has 384 processors (dual 3.06Ghz Pentium IV) with 480 GB RAM and an IBM x330 Linux Supercluster that has 1,038 processors (1GHz and 1.266GHz Pentium III) with 607.5 GB RAM. Other major computing resources include a 64-processor (400MHz UltraSPARC II) SUN UltraSPARC cluster with 32 GB RAM, a 64-processor (195MHz R10000) SGI server with 32 GB RAM, and two 8-processor (750MHz UltraSPARC III) SUN servers each with 16 GB RAM.

Programs

The Computational Manufacturing and Design Thrust was birthed from Nissan suggesting that the first focus areas should on stamping and crashworthiness that included optimization methods. Our funding sources in 2003-04 include the following Mississippi taxpayers, USCAR/USAMP, Sandia National Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, DARPA, and AISI. In 2004-05 we are looking to expand our funding base by submitting proposals for several new centers that rally around our vision. In particular, we are proposing centers for a new NSF ERC, DOE Center for Crashworthiness, DOT Center for Roadside Safety, and Center for Military Vehicles. We continue to look for new opportunities to impact local Mississippi business as well as national programs in which are unique capabilities can be used.

Strategic Partners

We continue to look for mutually beneficial relationships with industrial partners and research communities. Current partners include Nissan, ESI (PAMCRASH), ABAQUS, Alcoa, Instron, and the Center for Powder Metallurgy Technologies of North America. The focus for these strategic partners is related to our first focus areas of stamping and crashworthiness. We have since expanded our mission space to many more manufacturing processes and life cycle environments.

Education

We support stipends for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty sabbaticals, summer students, and part-time undergraduate students. Our focus areas are broad with the only constraint on proposals being that they meld with the aforementioned vision/mission. We continue to look for PhD students especially minorities, women, and US citizens.

Academic units that are involved include Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Education, and Agriculture and Biological Engineering.