The research group of Professor Steven Girshick (MSI Fellow; Mechanical Engineering) uses MSI to support their development of computational models of gas plasmas in which nanoparticles nucleate and grow. These plasmas have industrial applications, such as semiconductor processing and materials synthesis. As part of this research, the Girshick group, along with the research group of Regents Professor Donald Truhlar (MSI Fellow; Chemistry) and Professor Mark Kushner (University of Michigan), are developing a cyber platform that will integrate models of particle nucleation and aerosol dynamics together with a detailed plasma kinetics model. This model incorporates quantum mechanical calculations of properties and reactivities and will be optimized for parallel computation on high-performance computing (HPC) systems. It will include a user-friendly graphical user interface and will be useful for students, researchers, and industrial designers.
Dr. David Porter and Brent Swartz of the MSI staff are assisting with this project, helping develop the cyberinfrastructure components. These include: an integrated graphical user interface, a parallel and optimized version, and an automated post-processing pipeline which spans a heterogeneous mix of HPC platforms and high-end graphics generation and display systems. The project uses high-end HPC computational and visualization resources and specialized software.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Image description: Left: Particle size distribution and average particle charge in a plasma afterglow, from a simulation. Right: Plasma in experimental system designed for model validation.
posted on March 19, 2014