Modelling and experimental facilities

High performance computing

464 compute nodes with dual 2.0 GHz Intel Skylake processors.
Each compute node has 40 CPUs per node with 192 GB of DDR4 memory.
20 Nvidia Tesla V100 enterprise graphics cards.
40 Nvidia GTX 1080Ti consumer graphics cards.
4 high-memory nodes, each with 64 cores, 768 GB of RAM and 9 TB of local HDD scratch space.
4 high memory nodes running a 36 TB Hadoop/Spark service.
8 high memory nodes providing a private cloud service.
2 data visualisation nodes with 22 usable cores, 384 GB of RAM and an Nvidia M60 GPU. These run both windows and Linux VMs.
3 login nodes with 40 cores and 384 GB of memory.
In total more than 20,000 processor-cores providing 1,305 TFlops peak.
2.2 PB of storage run on IBM Spectrum Scale parallel file system.
InfiniBand network for interprocess communication

750 compute nodes with dual 2.6 GHz Intel Sandybridge processors;
Each compute node has 16 CPUs per node with 64 GB of memory;
4 high-memory nodes with two 32 cores and 256 GB of RAM;
24 Intel Xeon Phi Accelerators;
3 login nodes with 16 cores and 125 GB of memory;
In total 12320 processor-cores providing 250 TFlops peak;
1.04 PB of raw storage with Parallel File System;
InfiniBand network for interprocess communication;
12 x GPU nodes (2.6 GHz Intel Sandybridge 16-core nodes with ~62 GB usable memory and 2 K20 GPU cards each)

Dual Intel QuadCore/OctaCore PC workstations with nVidia GPUs (16 to 128 Gb RAM, Windows 10 64, high-performance Intel SSDs)
Synology drives

These applications are available on individual PC workstations, IRIDIS 4 and IRIDIS 3 supercomputer (Linux and Windows HPC)

Optical microscopy & image analysis including 3D optical measurement of surface form
Scanning electron microscopy (including high resolution field emission) with wavelength dispersive and energy dispersive X-ray analysis and EBSP
Non-contact optical profilometry
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) for topography and mechanical characterisation of surfaces
Nanoindenter stylus calibration by metrological AFM
X-ray diffraction at ambient and elevated temperatures
Residual stress by RAMAN microscopy
Nanoindenter (depth sensing indentation) for modulus and hardness measurement
Micro indenter with depth sensing for hardness measurement
Scratch testing for evaluation of coating failure. System has multi-pass facilities for examination of build-up of damage and acoustic emission for detection of failure events
Bend/tensile testing for adhesion measurement and work of fracture at ambient and elevated temperature
Residual stress measurement by X-ray diffraction at ambient and elevated temperature
Rockwell indentation test for adhesion measurement
Scratch test and model abrasion test system with friction and acoustic emission measurement to detect failure of coatings. Steady or ramped loads from 2-200 N with single or repeat pass testing