Supercomputer upgrade to benefit university engineers

The High-End Computing Terascale Resource (HECToR) facility will receive an upgrade and expansion from US supercomputer manufacturer Cray, leaving 827 teraflops of processing power at the disposal of researchers.

Prof Arthur Trew, who oversees HECToR, said it will enable engineers to extend current projects and to look for novel research problems.

Traditionally, supercomputers have been used to model fluid dynamics for things such as airflow over aircraft wings, as well as internal combustion mechanics in engines and the structural behaviour of buildings.

Trew said that, in addition to these areas, there are a number of other projects at various stages of development, the latest being fire modelling.

‘Can you simulate the progress of a fire through a building faster than real time? Such that you could give information to the firemen so they’d know if there was a danger that this will collapse or that will happen and better guide them,’ he said.

After they established some initial models, they were able to test them by setting fire to a block of flats that was due for demolition. Trew said it confirmed the basic principles but also threw up additional challenges.