The power of supercomputers made it possible for us to calculate the behavior of solid objects large
enough to see and touch by modeling the action of the individual molecules within them.
How cracks develop in a solid, the failure of a ductile metal under
tension, or the behaviour of a tethered membrane were predicted this way.
Materials Failure using the World's Fastest Computer During September of the new millennium, IBM delivered the world's fastest computer to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). For the first four months, the ASCI White computer was tuned, and scientists from a variety of fields were privileged to play with it. We were some of the lucky players: Farid Abraham and Bob Walkup (IBM), Huajian Gao (Germany), Mark Duchaineau (LLNL) and Tomas Diaz De La Rubia (LLNL).
We accomplished two atomistic simulation projects. The first was a multimillion atom simulation study of crack propagation in rapid brittle fracture, and the second investigated work hardening in ductile failure using over one billion atoms. For further details, choose a topic to the right: