Thursday 8th October 2009 Sponsored by QCIF

This series of breakfast events provides a regular engagement forum for open discussion between QUT’s Faculty of Science & Technology, industry and government.

The Faculty comprises the diverse disciplines of Information Technology, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Natural Resource Sciences and Physical and Chemistry Sciences, providing avenue hub for multi-disciplinary commercial, research and educational opportunities. To encourage cross-disciplinary engagement, each breakfast focuses on a topic of common interest to a variety of industry sectors.

Presenters for 8th Oct

• Dr Richard Taylor, Chief Technical Officer, Mesaplexx Pty Ltd
• Professor Ian Turner, Computational Mathematics, Faculty of Science and Technology, QUT

Abstract

Ceramic material development is costly and time consuming, but can be accelerated using material models based on atomic structures and their interactions. Richard discussed how Mesaplexx utilised High Performance Computing (HPC) resources and effective software to produce a better product.

Ian used examples drawn from his research on wood drying to illustrate how mathematical modelling is the precursor to such innovations. Wood drying involves simultaneous heat, mass and momentum transfer in a complex biological material. The successful development of an accurate drying model requires considerable skills in physics, applied mathematics, numerical analysis and high performance computing to facilitate an efficient drying simulator. This talk demystifyed some of the key computational aspects of this model development.