With the support of NSF, the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech will develop a highly flexible, readily expandable, and low-cost Heterogeneous Computer Environment for Parallel Processing (HCEPP) to provide the primary computational resources for the majority of computational engineering research within the School. The facility will be developed on three floors of the 62-year old Guggenheim Building and is being undertaken in conjunction with building-wide renovations financed by the institution. For over 60 years, the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech has been a national leader in engineering research and research training including activities in fluid dynamics, materials, diagnostics, turbulence, combustion, design optimization, concurrent engineering, and multimedia and complex aerospace system simulation. For several decades, this activity has relied on the use of powerful mainframe computers located in central campus facilities. However, computing technology has provided geometrically expanding computational capabilities in increasingly smaller systems, and these developments have obsoleted the mainframe computer in favor of networked high- performance workstations operating in tightly clustered groups. NSF support will renovate research space within the Guggenheim Building to create an environment for the integration of local computers and high-speed network communications. Funds will be used to develop high-speed FDDI Hubs with Ethernet Switching Hubs for the Ethernet-equipped workstations. Renovations supported under this grant will also provide a pro-rata share of improvements to the building infrastructure including installation of new HVAC capability, and installation of appropriate electrical and fire protection systems. Increased, and dedicated, HVAC capability will be added to meet the specific needs associated with the HCEPP facilities which are in discipline-specific computational labs distributed throughout the three floor environment. The renovated facilities will offer opportunities for new research endeavors including the integration of design, simulation, and large-scale computation involved in multidisciplinary efforts such as the High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT); the modeling and simulation of turbulence/chemistry interactions in entire engines; airframe and engine integration and fluid-structure interactions in new aerospace vehicles; and modeling of pollutant dispersion in the atmosphere. Additional students will be able to participate in the research activities through the reconfiguration and rehabilitation of existing space. Currently 76 are enrolled in the program; it is anticipated that research and research training capacity will increase to 158 students (a 107% increase) with completion of the new facilities. Students, including program participants from Clark-Atlanta University, will work with 8 faculty members to explore capabilities in concurrent engineering -- integrating state-of-the-art scientific computational tools interacting automatically with optimization tools, geometrical engines, and tools for analyzing manufacturability and maintainability of products.
