Podcast: Big Ideas Labs Looks at DYNA3D


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An iconic LLNL computer code that has saved the automobile industry billions of dollars is the focus for the newest episode of the Big Ideas Lab Podcast. Nearly 50 years ago in 1976, a then-LLNL mechanical engineer named John Hallquist wrote a small, 5,000-line program known as DYNA3D to help supercomputers analyze the structures of bombs dropped from the B-1 aircraft. The code modeled stress traveling through structures. Automakers use it in crash simulations. Beer manufacturers have run the code to design cans. Surgeons have used it to understand how fluid flows through the heart. Jet engine manufacturers have utilized it to certify modifications to engines and to model bird strikes. DYNA3D is a unique story about open source software and entrepreneurship.