9805563 Layton This Americas Program award will fund a cooperative research project between Dr. William Layton, University of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Nando L. Troyano DiBartolomeo, Universidad de Oriente, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. The focus of the project is to develop increasingly sophisticated electro-thermal cell models and finite element codes for the simulation of aluminum reduction cells (ARC). The increasing speed and storage capacity of massively parallel computers and clusters will play an important role in this effort, as will also improved algorithms in (ARC) computations. The goal of the project is to develop and to implement in computer codes state-of-the-art methods for simulating the physics of ARC. The program would provide a needed research tool for efforts to increase the safety and energy efficiency of aluminum production. The updated models and codes will be made available to university and industrial experts in the field in the US and Venezuela. The development of increasingly sophisticated electro- thermal cell models and finite element codes for their simulation should be of interest to major aluminum producing countries such as the US and Venezuela. Results of the best runs of the research code as well as the code itself will be made available to US and Venezuelan industrial research groups. ***
