CAVS Researchers' Solidification Work Garners Global Attention

August 7, 2013

MSU researchers at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems have produced solidification work that has garnered a third place position in a poster competition at the 2nd World Congress on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering held recently in Salt Lake City.

A team of researchers led by Sergio Felicelli, CAVS associate director and mechanical engineering endowed professor, along with CAVS assistant research professor Bohumir Jelinek and mechanical engineering student Mohsen Eshraghi, has developed an algorithm to simulate the process of metal alloy solidification. The algorithm efficiently utilizes thousands of processors within a supercomputer.

"The algorithm developed by CAVS researchers is a prime example of the cutting-edge research being performed at the High Performance Computing Collaboratory, stated Trey Breckenridge, director of high performance computing at Mississippi State. "It is our researchers' expertise coupled with our advanced supercomputing capabilities that attracts high-scale industry partners requiring state-of-the-art technologies to our university and state."

Felicelli's team's poster representation of their work was entitled "A Three-dimensional Lattice Boltzmann Model for Columnar Dendrite Growth", and placed third in the ICME competition among other presentations by universities, industry, and government agencies from all over the world on topics such as Modeling, Data and Infrastructure Tools, Process Optimization, and Materials Data. The poster included stereoscopic imagery of simulated dendrites compared with physical dendrites, and provided 3D glasses and a QR code for web links to animations.

The solidification process was further explained by Dr. Felicelli, "As liquid metal begins to solidify, dendrites - tiny microstructures - begin to form and ultimately will reveal and determine the strength and reliability of metal parts built from alloy products. This knowledge and understanding of the dendritic growth process allows manufacturers to create stronger and more reliable metal parts for industrial use."

For more information about the Solidification Project sponsored by the National Science Foundation, please visit: http://www.me.msstate.edu/faculty/felicelli/felicelli_research/dendrite_growth.html.

For more information about the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, please visit: www.cavs.msstate.edu.