Cyber Infrastructure for Rheology

 

With the IRIS Rheology Platform, we are in the process of building a global cyberinfrastructure (CI) for exploring and predicting rheological properties of complex materials. Such a CI for rheology has the potential of integrating, for the first time, the diverse knowledge of the world’s experts in applied and theoretical rheology. Through such collaboration, seemingly disparate theories and experimental observations will be linked and taken to their limits, thereby leading to unexpected insights and new questions. We envision a global alliance of rheology experts who access each other’s experimental results, make predictions with each other’s theories and simulate with each other’s computer codes. At the center of the CI is a platform operating system (IRIS code) that connects a wide range of dedicated software modules. These CI modules perform calculations and return the corresponding results to a central graphics screen. A universal data standard facilitates communication between laboratories worldwide. Several of the world’s leading rheology experts have begun to write theory modules that seamlessly connect into the rheology CI; several modules are complete and more are in progress. The rheology CI helps with tasks such as materials development, polymer engineering applications, teaching of rheology, rheology research (experimental and theoretical), data communication and archiving.


Global inter action of the leading experts



and seamless communication of rheological data and ideas

Three Rheology Platforms (RP) communicate with each other across the globe.

The general approach is described in a recent article on the "Amherst Cyber Infrastructure Initiative for rheology"