DOE to issue $3M FOA for High-Performance Computing for Materials; focus on severe, complex environments
01 March 2018
The Department of Energy announced a funding opportunity totaling $3 million to support projects between US industry and DOE national laboratories related to improving materials in severe or complex environments through the new High Performance Computing for Materials in Applied Energy Technologies (HPC4Mtls) Program. (Earlier post.)
The call for proposals is the first solicitation under the newly instituted HPC4Mtls Program. Through support from the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Fuel Cell Technologies (link is external) (FCTO) and Vehicle Technologies Offices (link is external)(VTO), selected industry partners wishing to apply high performance computing, modeling, simulation and data analysis to specific materials challenges will be granted up to $300,000 to pay for access to HPC facilities and the expertise of scientists at participating DOE national laboratories.
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| The High Performance Computing for Materials in Applied Energy Technologies (HPC4Mtls) Program is looking for industry projects that will discover or improve materials under extreme conditions. Shown here is a nanoconfinement approach to hydrogenation, which could significantly improve hydrogen storage performance. Click to enlarge. |
The HPC4Mtls Program seeks to provide HPC expertise and resources to industry, thus reducing the risk of HPC adoption and broadening its use to support technology development. Through this initial solicitation, DOE aims to demonstrate the benefit of HPC in investigating, improving and scaling up methods to accelerate development and deployment of materials that perform well in severe and complex energy application environments.
As the primary sponsor for the HPC4Mtls program, DOE’s Fossil Energy Office (FE) is particularly interested in predicting material behavior in high temperature or corrosive environments such as fossil fuel power plants; the kinetics of materials behavioral degradation; improving the performance of alloys; understanding processes in oxidation, corrosion, electrochemical interactions; and modeling of simulation tools that will reduce the time to qualification and certification of materials.
Other topic areas include materials for advanced water-splitting technologies; hydrogen storage; reducing weight reduction for light-duty vehicles; improving mechanical performance of alloys at elevated temperatures; and using machine learning and data analytics to identify promising new material compositions.
The DOE national labs have unparalleled expertise in new materials and materials performance under extreme environments and conditions. Combined with HPC, this new pillar will enable companies to accelerate the innovation and implementation of materials and processes.
—Jeff Roberts, LLNL’s director for Energy and Climate Security and co-creator of the HPC4Mtls Program
To qualify, Industry partners must contribute at least 20% of the total DOE funding for the projects. Total project size cannot exceed $500,000. Completed concept papers must be submitted by 19 April 19. All awards are subject to available funding.
LLNL will host two informational webinars, which are scheduled for 8 and 14 March.
The HPC4Mtls Program is administered by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), with managing principal laboratories Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The four laboratories will provide computing resources to the program, as will Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories.
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