Computational Thermal-Fluid Sciences Laboratory
Research in this laboratory focuses on numerical modelling of heat and fluid flow for a variety of applications. Finite difference, finite element, and Green's function techniques are used to solve problems in laser interaction with micron-sized droplets, heat transfer in thin films, combustion of droplets, curing of advanced thermoset composites, laser interactions with ceramics, energy efficient cycles for machinery, rotational molding of thermoplastics, and inverse problems.
Computing equipment includes eight state-of-the-art Sun Ultra 10 workstations. Each Ultra 10 system consists of 1x440MHz UltraSPARC-IIi processor, 2-MB L2 cache, 256-MB DRAM memory, Creator3D Graphics, 9-GB 7200rpm EIDE Internal disk, and a 48x CD-ROM. In addition, the lab has one Sun Ultra 2, one Sun Ultra 60, and one Sun SPARC 20; all of these systems also have the high end Creator3D Graphics, 256 MB memory and CD-ROM's. Each of the above mentioned systems are connected to a Sun Ultra Enterprise 3000 acting as the primary file server.
The Enterprise 3000 has four processors, 1GB memory, 50GB disk space, and CD-ROM. For detailed numerical calculations, there are two Sun Ultra 80's that have 4 x UltraSparc-II 450 Mhz processors, 1 GB memory, 9 GB Internal disk drive, Creator 3D graphics cards, and CD-ROMs. The lab computers also have access to a laser printer, a magneto-optical disk drive, and one 4mm tape drive. Software includes Fortran and C compilers, the Matlab matrix manipulation package, the IDEAS finite element pre- and post-processor, and various public domain drawing, image processing, and text formatting packages.