Building Bridges the Super Computer Way

In 1940, images of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge buckling and then breaking in high winds shocked the world, upsetting many of the apparent certainties of the civil engineering profession.

While there have been many advances in predicting the impact of wind turbulence since then, there has always been an element of guesswork - until the bridge was completed.

Now, at the University of Nottingham, a new Super Computer - one of the most powerful in Europe - is helping to reduce that element of guesswork still further. Roughly equivalent to 1000 PCs working together, the Super Computer can provide three million, million or three teraflops of computational power. This allows computer models of the stresses caused by turbulence to be built with far greater detail than ever before.

In addition to turbulence modelling, the Super Computer is also enabling the University’s researchers to make new strides in the areas of Pharmacy, Physics, Chemistry and Astronomy.