9224660 Ozsoyoglu SDB: Scientific Database Research for Polymers and Materials Engineering Needs This is the first year funding of a four-year continuing award. This research project develops a system for managing data generated by fracture study experiments in Polymers and Materials Engineering. The experiment data produced by materials engineers is large and has several data types that include summary data, image data, spatial data, and temporal data obtained by applying differing amounts of multiaxial stresses to materials at different times. The types of queries on the experiment data include statistical queries, matching queries, mapping queries, and temporal queries. The project involves integrating technologies from spatial and object-oriented databases, computational geometry, and image processing. New data structures, data models, query languages and query processing techniques that enable efficient storage and retrieval of data are designed. And a prototype scientific database management system is developed and tested. Such an integrated data management environment will benefit the researchers in polymers and materials engineering disciplines. Furthermore, the essential principles abstracted in this project can be used for data management in other disciplines. ***
