The US Department of Energy has awarded $1.87 million to seven projects focused on improving US manufacturing capabilities with the use of high performance computing.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory – DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

As part of the DOE’s High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) program, each project will receive up to $300,000 to run modeling and simulation workloads using HPC resources of National Laboratories. Private companies will fund 20-50 percent of the project, while also providing technical expertise and manufacturing data.

Make America Build Again

The seven partnerships are:

  • Eaton Corporation will partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop waste heat recovery technology that can be applied to industrial manufacturing processes and vehicle operations;
  • Caterpillar 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;
  • General Motors will partner with LLNL to reduce cycle time in composite manufacturing;
  • PPG Industries will partner with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to continue the modeling of an electrostatic rotary bell atomizer used to paint automobiles;
  • Vitro Flat Glass will partner with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop real-time glass furnace control using a neural net-based reduced order model of a CFD simulation of molten glass flow;
  • Arconic will partner with LLNL and ORNL to develop advanced understanding of the non-equilibrium metallic phases established during metal additive manufacturing processes;
  • Vader Systems will partner with Sandia National Laboratories to understand the physics needed to apply transition MagnetoJet 3D printing technology to a higher melting point metals and higher ejection rates.

The HPC4Mfg program has supported 47 projects to date, with more than $15 million awarded. The initiative is led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with additional support from Argonne National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.