DOE Announces Latest Round of HPC4Mfg Project Awards

The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $1.87 million for seven projects to advance innovation in U.S. manufacturing through high performance computing. Part of DOE's High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) program, the public private partnerships are designed to enable greater collaboration between DOE national labs and the U.S. manufacturing industry.

Each of the seven projects will receive up to $300,000 to support modeling and simulation subject-matter experts at the national laboratories and provide the needed supercomputing power. Industry partners will provide 20% to 50% cost-share, including the technical know-how and manufacturing data needed to tackle the project goals.

Here are the projects selected for the latest round of awards:                        

• PPG Industries, Inc. will partner with Berkeley Lab to continue the modeling of an electrostatic rotary bell atomizer used to paint automobiles in a follow-on project titled “Optimizing Rotary Bell Atomization.”
• Vitro Flat Glass LLC. will partner with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to develop real-time glass furnace control using a neural net-based reduced order model of a CFD simulation of molten glass flow in a follow-on project titled “Advanced Machine Learning for Glass Furnace Model Enhancement.”
• Caterpillar Inc. will partner with Argonne National Laboratory to increase efficiency and reduce emissions on optimizing heat transfer in diesel engines through simulations of piston and spray geometry in a project titled “Heavy-duty Diesel Engine Combustion Optimization for Reduced Emissions, Reduced Heat Transfer, and Improved Fuel Economy.”
• Eaton Corporation will partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to develop waste heat recovery technology that can be applied to industrial manufacturing processes and vehicle operations in a project titled “High Performance Computing to Enable Next-generation Low- temperature Waste Heat Recovery.”
• General Motors LLC will partner with LLNL to reduce cycle time in composite manufacturing in a project titled “Computational Modeling of High Pressure Resin Transfer Molding for Automotive Structural Carbon Fiber Composites.”
• Arconic Inc. will partner with LLNL and ORNL to develop advanced understanding of the non-equilibrium metallic phases established during metal additive manufacturing processes in a project titled “Multiscale Modeling of Microstructure Evolution During Rapid Solidification for Additive Manufacturing.” Project will be co-funded by the Office of Fossil Energy as an HPC4Materials for Severe Environments seedling project and by the Advanced Manufacturing Office as part of the HPC4Mfg portfolio.
• Vader Systems, LLC will partner with Sandia National Laboratory to understand the physics needed to apply transition MagnetoJet 3D printing technology to a higher melting point metals and higher ejection rates in a project titled “Computational Modeling of MHD Liquid Metal 3D Printing.”

The HPC4Mfg program, operated by DOE's Advanced Manufacturing Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, leverages world-class technical expertise with high performance computing to tackle manufacturing challenges uniquely solved by computer modeling. To date the program has supported 47 projects and provided more than $15 million for these public-private partnerships. Last year the program expanded to include projects focused on advanced materials. Two seedling projects are part of DOE's Fossil Energy High Performance Computing for Materials Program, which develops new or improved materials that can withstand extreme conditions.