Sandia National Labs Academic Alliance Collaboration Report 2020-2021

CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLGHT

Mohamed Ebeida

Sandia researcher Mohamed Ebeida works with the Discrete Math and Optimization team. His research interests span computational geometry (sampling methods and Voronoi tessellations) and uncertainty quantification and optimization. He collaborated with a team to develop VoroCrust, a software program that creates meshes using polyhedral cells rather than tetrahedral and hexahedral cells.

well-shaped pieces — these cells — you can mesh any model you want with confidence about the quality of the resulting mesh without any post-processing,” Mohamed said. Sandia manager Emily Stein and research engineer Tara LaForce used VoroCrust to make geological models for deep disposal of nuclear waste as part of DOE’s spent fuel and waste science and technology campaign, which Sandia leads. The VoroCrust project receives funding from this DOE campaign and also from Sandia’s LDRD program. Sandia manager Joe Bishop, who has been interested in VoroCrust for years, said modeling and simulation engineers on his team could benefit from the software for simulations if current software packages can leverage the polyhedral elements. “We need to know if we can run our simulations on these objects and compare it to tetrahedral and hexahedral methods,” he said. “VoroCrust is a promising tool. It could provide the geometry, and we would do the physics.” VoroCrust software was developed in collaboration with UT Austin, University of Maryland, College Park; and the University of California, Davis.

Scientists wanted to create a meshing software robust enough that it could model any object needed for simulation. Watch a video of model examples and statements on the work by Sandia computer scientist Mohamed Ebeida.

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2020-2021 Collaboration Report