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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JULY 28, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 30
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Special Features:
NEESgrid DELIVERS THE
"MOST"
On July 30, the NEESgrid project will demonstrate how grid services will
further earthquake research with an earthquake engineering test that
researchers quip is "so big it takes two time zones."
The multi-site online simulation test, or MOST, will span a thousand miles
to
connect three sites: the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA), which is responsible for designing and creating the NEESgrid
infrastructure; the MUST-SIM at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(UIUC), and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
NEESgrid's goal is to link earthquake researchers across the United
States—participants in the NSF-funded George E. Brown, Jr. Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES)— with leading-edge computing
resources and research equipment, allowing researchers to collaborate on
experiments and share resources. MOST is a demonstration of the full-system
prototype of the NEESgrid, showcasing the capabilities and features of the
advanced network through a real-science application.
"This is an advance look at how earthquake engineers will routinely conduct
research in the future," said Dan Reed, NCSA director. "NEESgrid is much more
than another fast network. It is an online collaboratory; a means for
scientists across the country to participate in experiments, even if the
experimental equipment is located more than a thousand mile away."
Details about the MOST experiment and access to NEESgrid telepresence
capabilities will be available at www.neesgrid.org/most.
MOST
will
begin at 11 a.m. Central time at NCSA and UIUC and at 10 a.m. Mountain time at
the University of Colorado.
The three sites will collaborate to examine the effects of force on a
one-story, two-bay frame, like one from the interior of a multistory building.
The experiment focuses on a specific joint within the structure.
"In general we can model the global behavior of structures such as
buildings
and bridges fairly well, but damage is a local phenomenon that can be
difficult to understand," explained Bill Spencer, a professor of civil
engineering and the co-principal investigator of the NSF-funded MUST-SIM
(multi-axial full-scale sub-structuring testing and simulation facility) at
UIUC. "We're employing a hybrid testing technique in which a computational
model representing the well-understood parts of the structure is combined with
full-scale testing of the critical structural elements to learn about this
localized behavior."
While NCSA simulates the effects of force on the structure with a
computational model, specific parts of the structure will be subjected to
force at MUST-SIM and at the University of Colorado site, the Hybrid Test
Platform for the Seismic Performance Evaluation of Structural Systems. Data
from each site will flow to the other two.
For MOST, the response of the structure is designed to remain in the
elastic
range. "We wanted to do a problem that we knew the answer to," Spencer said,
"but that still had all the features of a real experiment." Experiments like
these are used to understand how earthquakes damage structures and how homes
and businesses can be built to withstand an earthquake's force.
NEESgrid allows researchers to take advantage of the strengths of various
sites to create a virtual laboratory, and MOST will showcase the full range of
NEESgrid services, including:
- Core grid services: ensuring security and managing resources as
information
is exchanged among the sites
- Data management services: generating metadata and transferring data to and
from repositories
- Telepresence services: exchanging control and status information between
sites, observing the experiment and capturing data from a remote site, and
controlling the experiment from a remote site
- Computation and simulation services: enabling access to computer resources
and simulation software
Along with NCSA, the other institutions participating in the creation of
the
NEESgrid are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Michigan, the
University of Oklahoma, the University of Southern California, and
USC/Information Science Institute.
About NCSA
NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national
high-performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge
computing, networking and information technologies. Located at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science
Foundation. Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the
University of Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies.
For more information, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.
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