A Steering and Visualization Environment

PI建议在分布式工作站网络上开发一个可视化和交互式计算导向的环境。正在实现的可视化和转向前端将能够使用客户机-服务器模型与计算引擎进行交互，计算引擎也可以驻留在并行计算机上，此外还有作为主要目标体系结构的分布式计算机网络。该环境的目标应用将是受限几何结构中的三维液晶材料。所使用的模型将基于朗多-德-热纳理论。人们特别感兴趣的是随着温度的变化，液晶的有序度和取向度的变化。关于液晶特性的知识是很重要的，例如，对于液体显示器的设计。目标应用具有从计算转向中获益的一类问题的特点，因为它具有具有不同对称结构的多个解，并且对于决定参数的某些值表现出分叉或转折点行为。因此，这是一个路径跟随或延续问题。

The PI's propose to develop an environment for visualization and interactive computational steering on a network of distributed workstations. The visualization and steering front-end being implemented will be capable of interacting using a client-server model with a computational engine, which could also reside on a parallel computer, in addition to the distributed network of computers which is the main target architecture. The target application of this environment will be 3-dimensional liquid crystal material in a confined geometry. The model used will be based on the Landau-de Gennes theory. In particular, one is interested in the changes in the degree of order and orientation of the liquid crystals as the temperature is varied. Knowledge about the properties of liquid crystals is of importance, for example, for the design of liquid displays. The target application is characteristic of a class of problems which would benefit significantly from computational steering, since it has multiple solutions with different symmetry structures and exhibits bifurcation or turning-point behavior for certain values of the determining parameters. Hence this is a path following or continuation problem.