Just as carpenters use a saw as a tool and wood as a material, engineers are using the teraflops computer as a tool and computational models created and validated by fundamental experiments as materials. A transformation between the real, physical world and the virtual, simulation world is necessary in order to take advantage of the power of this new computational engine. This will have a tremendous impact on education and national research agendas. I noted earlier how integral this is in making the transformation between the real and virtual worlds. Let me give you an example of what we mean by this.
Fire is one of the dominant threats to the safety of our weapon systems.
Fire is one of the most challenging processes to simulate. Most of the physical processes are nonlinear, almost all of them are tightly coupled, they span tremendous scales, and to top it off, they are in a natural balance. That is, one small error in simulating one of the physical processes can have a large effect on the prediction of the fire environment. In order to have confidence in our simulation, we have established an integrated triad of technologies, including phenomenology, experimental diagnostics and data, and computational technologies. It will be possible to simulate the entire product life cycle.