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           COLLOQUIUM OF THE COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE CENTER
                              College of Science
                       (CDS Department CSI 898-Sec 001)
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An overview of several armor technologies and high performance computing 
                 at the Army Research Laboratory

                         Robert L. Doney III
         Armor Mechanics Branch, US Army Research Laboratory, 
                  Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD

The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is the Armyâ™s corporate basic and applied
research laboratory. ARL consists of the Army Research Office and six
Directorates: Weapons and Materials, Sensors and Electron Devices, Human
Research and Engineering, Computational and Information Sciences, Vehicle
Technology, and Survivability and Lethality Analysis. ARL, one part of which
was formerly known as the Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL), has been a
hub for cutting edge computational work. In fact, John von Neumann was one
of BRL's computing pioneers (earlier, E. Hubble also used to be an
employee). 

Within WMRD, sits the Armor Mechanics Branch where we conduct research and
improve armors on a variety of ground vehicles. A substantial portion of our
efforts are guided via high performance computing through our
Major Shared Resources Center (MSRC). The MSRC has several thousand
processors available for massively parallel calculations. We use state of
the art Department of Energy hydrodynamics codes and their coupled material
models for this work. To have confidence in the results however,
verification and validation (V&V) studies are needed which are then compared
with experiment. Codes and material models are subsequently improved.

In this presentation, I will provide a general overview of ARL and various
armor technologies. My focus will then turn to a V&V study we are currently
investigating: exploding wires. Here we are interested in evaluating the
robustness of the copper material model and the evolution of the expanding
plasma. I will close with an appeal for interested future modelers to start
getting involved.

                        Monday, November 10, 2008
                                  4:30 pm
                     Room 301, Research I, Fairfax Campus

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 PM.
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Find the schedule at www.cmasc.gmu.edu/seminar/schedule.html
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