All

I'd like to share the following paper with you. I think its an interesting example of where
engineering knowledge can be used to help understand biological processes. We used microscope work and finite element analysis to test a hypothesis as to how a biological structure, crimp, forms in tendons. We'd like to continue this work, so all comments welcome.

All,

Anybody have approximate run times for the following linear static problems:

A) In 1995 on a reasonable workstation

20,000 degree of freedom

B) Now on modern desktop computer with quad core and plenty of RAM

20,000 degree of freedom
200,000 degree of freedom
1,000,000 degree of freedom

Any contributions/guesses/opinions welcome. The scatter will be useful.

Thanks

Lee

2 Year PDRA Opportunity in:

Image Based Modelling to Improve Damage/Fracture Tolerance in Materials

All,

Could anyone recommend courses, online materials or text books that
would be suitable for teaching the finite element method to someone with
a non-engineering background. This request is on behalf of an MD
student wishing to use the FEM for modelling the wrist. We're initially
looking for introductory materials.

Best regards

Lee

The following paper is now online:

Falkingham P.L., Bates K.T., Margetts L. and Manning P.L. (2011) "The
'Goldilocks' effect: Presevational bias in vertebrate track
assemblages", Journal of the Royal Society Interface

See: http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/01/12/rsif.201...

Authors welcome any comments for future studies!

You are welcome to follow my updates on Twitter:

 http://twitter.com/LeeMargetts

I have funding for software development to provide a UMAT interface in the parallel versions of the code from Smith I.M. and Griffiths D.V. "Programming the Finite Element Method", 4th Edition, Wiley, 2004.

I would be interested to hear about any open source UMATs available for download. I'd also like to hear from anyone who might like to use their closed source UMATs in a parallel environment.

The funding has been awarded by the UK National HPC Service HECToR to encourage the greater use of HECToR for Structural Engineering.

The project runs from 1 December 2010 to 30 November 2011. Further details can be found at  http://tinyurl.com/23favxu

My PhD student Peter Falkingham (who graduated 15 December 2010) has published some interesting papers on Dinosaur Trackways. These might be of interest to those teaching Soil Mechanics, to give some examples that might be more stimulating than foundation design or traditional geotechnical engineering.

References below:

NAFEMS will be holding a special workshop titled "High Performance Computing for Engineering Simulation". This workshop is part of the biennial NAFEMS World Congress (http://www.nafems.org/congress) being held in Boston USA from 23-26 May 2011. The aim of the workshop is to promote discussion about the changing HPC landscape. Participants will include the users of engineering simulation software, those that develop it and those who provide the underlying hardware infrastructure.

All, I am conducting a survey and your response would be very much appreciated. The purpose of the survey is to gather data that will help the developers of open source software improve the success of their projects. All replies received before midnight Sunday 26th September will be entered into a draw for a £30 Amazon gift voucher. Here is a link to the survey: Click here to take survey Thanks for your participation! Lee Margetts

I'm doing a literature review on Interactive Simulation Environments. Does anyone have any suggestions for interesting papers to look at? 

 And if you've written one and let me know, I might cite it :-)

"The Newton International Fellowship scheme will select the very best early stage post-doctoral researchers from all over the world, and offer support for two years at UK research institutions."

http://www.newtonfellowships.org

If you are interested in applying for a Newton Fellowship at the University of Manchester, meet the criteria specified on the url above, and have a background in:

• Engineering (required)
• X-Ray tomographic imaging (required)
• Finite element analysis (desired)

Please contact me directly and send a brief curriculum vitae.

I will be setting up an open source project for parallel finite element analysis in the next month or two. I am just wondering what the community's opinion is regarding the best repository to use.

SourceForge? Google Software? Others?

Your opinions are welcome.

Please note that the DHPA award is no longer available. We look forward to Ms Zartasha Mustansar joining us in January 2009.

Using Computational Biology to Bring Predatory Dinosaurs Back to Life

The proposed programme of research seeks to use state-of-the-art computational techniques to reverse engineer the walking cycle of a predatory dinosaur. Software for image-based modelling, parallel finite element analysis and evolutionary robotics will be coupled and deployed
over a computational Grid comprising many thousands of processors. This resource will facilitate a range of unique meta-experiments, enabling new scientific research to be undertaken that would otherwise not be possible. Not only will these experiments provide insight into the evolution of