Hydra was purchased using startup funds provided to Dr. Shanbhag and is used to execute mesoscopic simulations of polymer solutions and melts. It is well known that the computational load of molecular simulations increases with the level of detail. The main goal of these mesoscopic simulations is to interpret events that occur at sub-chain length and time scales and derive average parameters that are used in mean field tube models of polymers. Of interest are the dynamics and crystallization of linear, branched and cyclic polymers. Hydra is also used to model analytical techniques such as TREF (Temperature Rising Elution Fractionation) and CRYSTalline Analysis Fractionation (CRYSTAF) used in determining the chemical composition distribution of random ethylene copolymers.
The current hardware configuration consists of the following: