Velocity data on star formation
A software tool that helps engineers quickly solve problems and make decisions has won national recognition for a team of Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory researchers.
A 2006 R&D 100 Award will be presented to Mark Bryden, associate chair and associate professor of mechanical engineering; Gerrick Bivins, an Iowa State graduate who manages a software project in Bryden’s lab; and Doug McCorkle, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering.
Bryden, Bivins and McCorkle call their invention a texture based engineering tool. It’s software that takes large 3-D data sets and quickly converts them into pictures that engineers can analyze and work with. They say there’s nothing on the market that can do the job as quickly and intuitively.
McCorkle recently demonstrated the technology by loading data from a fluidized bed combustion chamber onto his laptop computer. The computer converted the data into color, 3-D movie images that showed the flows, bubbles and other characteristics within the combustion chamber. McCorkle could instantly adjust how the data was displayed with a move of a mouse.
He said other software products for engineers take a long time to load data and there are additional delays every time engineers change how the data is displayed. If that was how video games worked, McCorkle said they wouldn’t be much fun and people wouldn’t play for very long.
Bryden is quick to point out that the tool is a lot more than colorful graphics. He said all those pictures and colors are based on real physics. And engineers at places such as Deere & Co., Pratt & Whitney and the John Zink Co. are using those pictures to help them make decisions about projects.
Can engineers learn from gamers? Sounds like it to me.
Wow….been here the whole day and no one has commented on this story yet.
I feel sad when I see stories that the editors took time to post, yet no one seems to want to comment on them. It’s like the new restaurant that opens in the neighborhood and you go by it and it looks like no one is going there, so you go because you like to help out and you feel sorry for them..
Hang in there guy…you’ll get more people in here commenting on you in no time.
You know, this is the kind of software I wish I had when I was doing more engineering — and engineering sales. Explaining complex engineering requirements is so much easier when you can do it graphically.
And they surely seem to be accomplishing a boatload up in Iowa.
That’s the first Technological achievement not based on a mistake that I have heard of.
Dr. Bryden is a great teacher as well.