Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechnion

The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA, “Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechnion”) is the oldest and most prestigious Engineering School in Greece. It accepts the best students in the country according to the rankings of the yearly stringent national admittance examination. The School of Civil Engineering of NTUA offers a five-year M.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering as well as Post-graduate courses on Structural and Hydraulic engineering. The Institute of Structural Analysis and Antiseismic Research (ISAAR), is one of the oldest and most active laboratories of NTUA. The ISAAR belongs to the Structural Engineering Department of the School of Civil Engineering where 25 professors of different levels are affiliated. In terms of human capital ISAAR is composed of 9 faculty members and a group of highly selected pre-doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers. The ISAAR has carried out extensive research activity in the scientific areas that are related to static-dynamic analysis and design of structures. The faculty members have the capacity to undertake scientific work at the forefront of modern research in the following areas: Numerical simulation for the static and dynamic analysis of large-scale and non-conventional structures, verification and validation of commercial software and development of scientific computer codes for the analysis and design of structures.

The High Performance Computing research group for Applications in Structural Mechanics (HPC-GASM), created by the Director of ISAAR Professor M. Papadrakakis over 20 years ago, constitutes a centre of excellence in NTUA with 3 faculty members, 6 post-doctoral researchers, 14 PhD students and a number of postgraduate and undergraduate students. The field of interest of the Group is the development and applications of algorithms and software for the solution and design of large-scale structural systems in high performance computing environments. Members of HPC-GASM are currently working in the following scientific fields in the framework of competitive research projects or in the context of their doctoral studies: (i) Non-linear dynamic analysis of concrete and steel structures under seismic loading, (ii) Solution of large-scale finite element problems with domain decomposition and data handling techniques on high performance parallel and distributed computer environments, (iii) Large-scale structural and design optimization of real world structures, (iv) Solution of large non-linear problems and path-following strategies in solid and structural mechanics, (v) Adaptive strategies and solution techniques for p, h, hp finite element procedures, (vi) Multiscale methods for analysis and design of advanced structural materials, (vii) Stochastic finite element methods, reliability analysis and Monte Carlo simulation, (viii) Neural network applications in structural engineering and (ix) Soil-fluid-structure interaction problems.

Particular emphasis has been given over the last years in the research area of applications in hybrid CPU-GPU computer architectures, where new theoretical formulations and algorithmic aspects have been developed. The HPC-GASM has been involved under the supervision of Prof. M. Papadrakakis in the following research projects funded by EU, related to the current proposal: European Research Council Advanced Grant ‘‘MASTER – Mastering the computational challenges in numerical modeling and optimum design of CNT reinforced composites’’, 2012-17, “Advanced finite element solution procedures on innovative computer architectures”, Human Capital and Mobility, 1994-96. “Integrated simulation and design system for civil and structural engineering”, Esprit 1996-98. “Optimum Structural and Aerodynamic Design of Planes and Ground Vehicles with use of Networked Computers of High Performance Computing” 1999-2001.

ISAAR occupies a lab and office space of approximately 1200 m2. ISAAR also has in a special room an operational PC-cluster for parallel computing, consisting of 100-nodes in a separate room. Each cluster node is based on an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor, clocked at 3.00 GHz. The ISAAR hardware is bought from external research funding and through the direct financial support of NTUA.

Numexas Key personnel

The key personnel to be involved in the project apart from M. Papadrakakis, is Prof. V. Papadopoulos an expert in computational methods and stochastic simulation, Prof. N. Lagaros an expert in artificial intelligence and optimization, Dr. G. Stavroulakis and the research associate A. Karatarakis both experts in high performance computing in hybrid CPU-GPU  architectures.

Specific contribution to NUMEXAS

The NTUA team will be involved in the development and design of new codes for implicit field solvers for structural and fluid mechanics problems, as well as of metaheuristic optimization algorithms for optimum design of engineering systems considering uncertainties, to be applied in exascale architectures, and will coordinate WPs 1 and 6. Their code SOLVERIZE will be used as starting point for the new codes to be developed in the project.