The US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) awarded $2 million in federal funding for seven new high performance computing projects, as part of the High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Initiative, a DOE-wide effort comprising EERE, the Office of Fossil Energy (FE), the Office of Science, and the National Laboratories.

The initiative helps to leverage the National Laboratories’ high performance computing capabilities to address challenges in manufacturing and materials through state-of-the-art modeling, simulation, and data analysis. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) leads the HPC4EI program along with partner laboratories Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest and Sandia National Laboratories, as well as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Within the High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) Program, EERE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) has selected five projects:

• Ferric, Inc. will partner with LLNL to develop analytical tools that will combine traditional electromagnetic finite-element analysis with micromagnetic simulation.

• Applied Materials will continue to work with LLNL on Phase II of developing predictive modeling capabilities for the advanced film deposition technique, High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering.

• Gas Technology Institute, Gopher Resource, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will partner to use high performance computing to increase the productivity of secondary lead furnaces.

• Eastman will collaborate with Argonne National Laboratory on developing open-source software-based models of a gas atomizer based on ongoing work being performed at Eastman.

• Praxair Surface Technologies Inc. will work with Ames National Laboratory to enhance the efficiency of metal powder production for additive manufacturing applications through computational fluid dynamics simulations.

Within the High Performance Computing for Materials (HPC4Mtls) Program, EERE’s Vehicle Technologies Office has selected two projects:

• PPG Industries will collaborate with LLNL and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to apply classical molecular dynamics simulations and density functional tight-binding calculations to fundamentally understand the influence of water on the properties of epoxy-based adhesives joined to lightweight substrates.

• AK Steel will collaborate with ORNL on thermo-mechanical forming process development to produce tailored strength automotive structural components.

The Office of Fossil Energy has selected two additional HPC4Mtls projects to support.

Selected projects will be awarded up to $300,000 of DOE funding to support high performance computing processing time and work performed by the National Laboratories. Industry partners provide at least 20% of the funding for new projects.