History of the ERC SimCenter

The mission of the ERC Computational Simulation and Design Center (ERC SimCenter) is to serve Mississippi State University, U.S. government and industry through research and development of advanced computational modeling, simulation and design of physical systems to solve real world problems.

The ERC SimCenter was formed in July of 2000 as part of the Engineering Research Center (ERC) within the College of Engineering at MSU. The ERC SimCenter was formerly the Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at MSU's National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (NSF ERC). Its research advanced the NSF ERC mission by reducing the time and cost required for complex field simulations of increased fidelity and scope for practical engineering analysis and design problems using high-performance computing. This achievement was made possible by advances in unstructured grid generation, accurate solution algorithms, scalable parallel computing, large-scale solution visualization, design optimization algorithms, user interfaces, and fully integrated simulation and design systems. The ERC SimCenter has conducted modeling and simulation demonstrations of this advanced technology for design and analysis of submarines, surface ships, rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, launch vehicles, tactical missiles, automobiles, turbomachinery and blood pumps for sponsors such as DoD, NASA, Nissan and many others.

The ERC SimCenter has a critical mass of computational research, development, and application specialists who comprise a focused multidisciplinary team. This team will continue to leverage basic and applied research and education in computational engineering to develop new enabling technology for computational modeling, simulation, analysis and design.