Advanced Computing, Mathematics and Data
Staff Awards & Honors
May 2016
‘Metal’ of Honor
Members of PNNL's Computational Engineering group share 2015 USCAR Team Award
Members of PNNL Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division’s Computational Engineering group recently were honored with a 2015 U.S. Council for Automotive Research, or USCAR, Team Award for their work providing predictive modeling tools to improve the cost and performance of new automotive materials. PNNL’s Kyoo Sil Choi, Xiaohua Hu, Guang Cheng, and Xin Sun will share the award for their contributions to the United States Automotive Materials Partnership (USAMP) Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) 3GAHSS team. The award was presented during the USCAR Recognition Luncheon on May 26, 2016 in Detroit.
(l to r): Choi, Hu, Cheng, and Sun are all part of the award-winning USAMP ICME 3GAHSS team. Enlarge Image.
The USAMP ICME 3GAHSS team’s work is focused on reducing the time needed to develop and apply lightweight third-generation advanced high strength steel, known as 3GAHSS, by integrating material models of different length scales into an ICME model. These computational models can account for the physical characteristics and help predict the failure limits of steel. The team is using the ICME approach, which links materials models across multiple length scales to hone their performance requirements, to expand existing methods and tools and provide consistent models that are relevant at both component and assembly levels. Such predictive tools are important to counter the typically high development and production costs associated with lightweight materials, especially those suitable for automotive applications.
According to Sun, PNNL’s principal investigator on the USAMP ICME 3GAHSS team, who also is a Laboratory Fellow and the Associate Division Director for Computational Engineering, they are working toward the notable goal of providing an ICME-based 3GAHSS model that results in an assembly design with up to 35 percent weight savings.
“It is quite an honor to share the award with such a prestigious and hardworking team,” she added. “Accelerated development of 3GAHSS with ICME tools is elemental to the automotive vehicle weight reduction mission, and I am glad our PNNL team is playing a key role in this transformative work by creating the linkages of computational tools across various length scales.”
In addition to PNNL, the USAMP ICME 3GAHSS team partners include: Brown University, Clemson University, Colorado School of Mines, Michigan State University, University of Illinois, Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Co., General Motors, AK Steel Corp., ArcelorMittal, Nucor Steel Corp., EDAG Inc., and Livermore Software Technology Corp., as well as the Auto/Steel Partnership and USAMP consortiums. The team has been working together since 2013.
