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A computational aerodynamics design system (FLITE) developed by Swansea researchers has been of significant economic benefit to the aerospace industry. When introduced, the unstructured mesh FLITE approach was considered by BAE Systems to be a step change in their design cycle. Using FLITE, highly complex modern aerospace configurations could be analysed in short timescales. The FLITE system has since been utilised by a number of international organisations. Its use in the design of the BLOODHOUND project has also contributed to significant public engagement in science and engineering, including a large-scale education programme with which over 5,000 schools have fully engaged.
Spatial decomposition methods have been extended to apply to spatial, scale, and temporal domains as a result of work at the Numerical and Applied Mathematics Research Unit (NAMU) at the University of Greenwich. This work has led to a numerical framework for tackling many nonlinear problems which have been key bottlenecks in software design and scientific computing. The work has benefitted the welding industry in the UK because these concepts are now embedded, with parallel computing, in the industry's modern welding design process software.
Computational research work at Swansea concerned with finite element/discrete element analysis, has made a profound impact on the solution of industrial problems. The development and implementation of novel computational algorithms and their subsequent application to leading edge engineering and scientific problems has been effected through the commercial software system ELFEN, developed collaboratively with Rockfield Software Ltd, a spin-out company from Swansea University. ELFEN has enabled the company to expand through the development of an international reputation as a leading provider of computational technology to the defence, manufacturing, oil recovery, mining and other sectors. Specific examples of economic benefit described in this case study are (i) design methodology for weight reduction in glass container production resulting in significant energy and CO2 emission savings and (ii) computational modelling of rock blasting operations leading to substantial economies in the mining industry.
This case study describes the creation and use of advanced simulation technology by international mining corporations to optimise high value metal recovery. The technology involved the development of advanced novel computational methods and software tools to model industrial scale heap leach processes for large scale industrial application at major mining operations. This focus on the development of optimised operational strategies has produced considerable economic benefits measured in the $multi-millions to industrial sponsors, including $58 million dollars in additional revenue for one multi-national corporation over one year following the adoption of engineered heaps based upon the advanced simulation tools from Swansea.
From 1995 Professor Munjiza's research at QMUL has led to the development of a series of algorithms which can predict the movement and relationship between objects. These algorithms have been commercialised by a range of international engineering and software companies including Orica, the world's leading blasting systems provider (via their MBM software package), and the software modelling company, Dassault Systems (via their Abaqus software). Through these commercialisation routes Munjiza's work has generated significant economic impact which is global in nature. For example, his predictive algorithms have enabled safer, more productive blast mining for Orica's clients — in one mine alone, software based on Munjiza's modelling approach has meant a 10% increase in productivity, a 7% reduction in costs and an annual saving of $2.8 million. It has also been used in Dassault Systems' Abaqus modelling software, which is the world's leading generic simulation software used to solve a wide variety of industrial problems across the defence, automobile, construction, aerospace and chemicals sectors with associated economic impact.
The development of the bespoke finite element software ICFEP (Imperial College Finite Element Program) is the main research outcome of the numerical group in the Geotechnics Section at Imperial College (IC). The research conducted in the Section since 1993 has led to a substantial growth of ICFEP's modelling capabilities in both complexity and robustness, following closely the advancements in understanding of real soil behaviour achieved through laboratory and field investigations of soils. Between 2008 and 2013 the application of these modelling capabilities to practical engineering problems, which are generally unavailable with a similar degree of sophistication in commercial software, amounts to over 80 projects of which a third are worth multi-billion pounds in global value. The impact of ICFEP's application has been to reduce the geotechnical risk and the cost of design and construction, and to give confidence in the environmental stability of design solutions, by providing accurate predictions of soil response associated with individual projects.
Researchers in the Department of Mathematics at Swansea University have developed novel geometric methods for image processing, feature extraction and shape interrogation. The research has delivered commercial and clinical impact in a variety of settings, ranging from new water marking techniques to improve piracy detection in the film industry, to medical research investigating the replacement of traditional CT scans with safer MR scans. The research has also delivered an automatic feature and gap detection tool that has been successfully applied to aircraft data files provided by BAE Systems. A consultancy company is exploiting the methods and a licence for the commercialisation of the technology is in process.
This case study describes the development, application and commercialisation of an open source tool, BSMBench that enables supercomputer vendors and computing centres to benchmark their system's performance. It comprehensively informs the design and testing of new computing architectures well beyond other benchmarking tools on the market, such as Linpack.
The significance of our code is that, unlike other benchmarking tools, it interpolates from a communication- to a computation-dominated regime simply by varying the (physics) parameters in the code, thus providing a perfect benchmark suite to test the response of modern multi-CPU systems along this axis. The impact of this work has great reach: a start-up company, BSMbench Ltd, has been founded to develop and commercialise the software; adopters have included IBM - one of the giants of the supercomputer world (where it uncovered errors in their compilers); it has been deployed by Fujitsu to validate its systems, by HPC Wales, a multi-site, commercially focussed national computer centre and by Transtec, an HPC company employing over 150 staff; and tutorial articles about BSMBench have appeared in magazines such as Linux Format.
This software tool spawned from our research into "Beyond the Standard Model" (BSM) physics which aims to understand the Higgs mechanism in particle physics at a fundamental level. This involved simulating quantum field theories using bespoke code on some of the fastest supercomputers on the planet.
Work undertaken at the Applied DSP and VLSI Research Group since the early/mid nineties, has led to a number of significant contributions underpinning the development and commercial exploitation by industry of power efficient and complexity reduced integrated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) systems and products. These developments have paved the way for a new paradigm in the design of complexity reduced electronic systems aiding the emergence of numerous new commercial application areas and products in a diversity of fields. Indeed, these developments continue their currency and applicability in today's electronic products sector and thus shall be at the core of this case study.
Collaborative research with Tata Steel has delivered significant economic impact, maintaining leading-edge business performance with new functionally coated metal construction products carrying 40 year warranties, and research contributing to global competitiveness for Electrical Steels. In addition partner company performance through skilled people has been improved through the delivery of 61 highly trained doctoral level coatings leaders and technologists, the majority of whom are now running their own research groups or are director level technologists.
Public interest and engagement activity has focussed on the application of research techniques and in functional coatings for energy through the `Buildings as Powerstations' concept and `Materials Live' events.