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Trinity College Dublin

Personal Information
Name Geraghty, Thomas Dermot
Main Department Mechanical & Manufacturing Eng
College Title Lecturer
E-mail dermot.geraghty@tcd.ie
College Tel +353 1 896 1042
Web http://people.tcd.ie/tgerghty
 
Membership of Professional Institutions, Associations, Societies
Details Date From Date To
Member of Institution of Engineers MIEI
Member ACM
 
Description of Research Interests
Current research interests include new parallel architectures for the solution of matrix based numerical problems. These architectures are implemented on state of the art FPGAs and aim to improve over the performance of conventional PCs in solving large Finite Element problems. Further research work is being conducted on developing delay tolerant sensor networks for applications in lake water quality monitoring and recording of acoustic noise. Novel strain sensors are also being developed based on Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) devices - so called wireless strain gauges. Additionally a new real time monitoring system to measure forces transmitted to road surfaces by HGVs has been developed and is about to be piloted. A novel sensor is being developed in conjunction with BIM to measure the vital statistics of fish.
 
Research Interests
Mechanical Engineering
 
Research Projects
Project title A Numerical Accelerator for Computational Fluid Dynamics
Summary Solving problems in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is numerically intensive but amenable to 'divide and conquer' parallel algorithms. In this project, the most numerically expensive elements of the solution algorithms which typically solve a large set of linear equations will be implemented at a hardware rather than a software level. This will reduce the run times by a factor of between 100 and 1000, when compared to current techniques. To achieve this an FPGA based numerical accelerator comprising multiple parallel computational units (CU) will be implemented to accelerate the solution of these problems. The accelerator will be a co-processor to a workstation and will operate transparently to the user. It will feature 'on the fly' hardware re-configurability wherein the hardware may be customised to meet the specific demands of a problem.
Funding Agency Enterprise Ireland
Programme Research Innovation Fund - €145,000
Type of Project
Date from 2/1/2003
Date to 30/12/2004
Person Months 24


Project title Delay Tolerant Sensor Networking – SeNDT
Summary Delay tolerant networking covers constrained networks where unavoidable communication delays (hours/weeks) are such that normal “chatty” Internet protocols (especially TCP) cannot be used. The “canonical” examples of delay tolerant networking are interplanetary and sensor networks. This project builds upon ongoing work in interplanetary networking by applying this work to build, from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products and freely available technology, an innovative architecture which allows novel sensor network applications to be easily and cheaply deployed. The project emphasises the evidentiary (security) requirements that must be met for such data to be credible. The result is a proof-of-concept, secure, delay-tolerant, sensor network.
Funding Agency Enterprise Ireland
Programme Research Innovation Fund - €142,000
Type of Project
Date from 1/11/2003
Date to 30/3/2005
Person Months 24


Project title Real Time Weigh in Motion of HGVs
Summary The objective of the project is to develop and field test a low-cost system for static and dynamic axle load measurement for real-time weigh-in-motion for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). The system will be integrated with a commercial ‘off-the-shelf’ (COTS) unit that provides GPS capability and is interfaced to a Geographical Information System (GIS). The integrated system will provide real-time data on loads transmitted to road surfaces.
Funding Agency Enterprise Ireland
Programme Research Innovaton Fund - €146,000
Type of Project
Date from 2/1/2003
Date to 30/5/2005
Person Months


Project title Finite an Iterative Matrix Mathematics Accelerator (FIAMMA)
Summary Currently the performance of individual science/engineering workstations is limited by silicon I.C. technology and CPU architectures. This means that to solve complex numerical problems in aeronautics, civil and chemical engineering product designers must use multiple workstations or a high-performance computer. Either option is expensive in terms of both capital and maintenance, restricting the amount of computer modeling which can be performed by an individual scientist or engineer. This proposal aims to deliver 30-60 double-precision GFLOPs (Giga Floating-Point Operations per second) of computing power to the desktop using FPGA technology rather than custom silicon (to reduce design and deployment costs) for the price of a high-end graphics card, in an era when a single Pentium 4 processor can deliver 6 GFLOPs at 3GHz, and realistically could deliver twice this in the next generation. To make this computing power available to engineers and scientists the proposed hardware accelerator will be complemented by software libraries for C, C++ and Fortran as well as for commercial packages (e.g. FLUENT, ANSYS) removing the need to rewrite legacy software.
Funding Agency Enterprise Ireland
Programme Commercialisation Fund - Technology Devleopment - €350,000
Type of Project
Date from 1/6/2004
Date to 1/6/2006
Person Months


Project title Dev-SeNDT – Developing Sensor Networking with Delay Tolerance
Summary Dev-SeNDT is geared towards the "meta-objective" of developing SeNDT to the point where it will be licensed and we aim to negotiate such licenses. The specific, verifiable project objectives to enable this are: 1. Running significant pilots: water quality monitoring on Trinity and Carr's lakes in Co. Cavan, and noise monitoring in an urban area to demonstrate that the technology meets the challenges posed more effectively than competing approaches. a. One highly specific and testable subsidiary objective here is to run a lake water quality monitoring network for an entire winter with only solar power and without exhausting batteries. b. Demonstrating that the SeNDT software and technology platform is applicable in diverse environmental monitoring applications by showing that both boats and busses (or equivalent) can be used as data-mules without unnecessary software or hardware changes. 2. Demonstrating that SeNDT is ready-to-license for existing or new product lines. a. Integration of the SeNDT technology with a commercial-grade GIS and database back-end – necessary for practical application development and deployment. b. Decreasing the unit cost of SeNDT nodes via a cost-reduction re-design of the hardware to take advantage of current products, and refining the system requirements to better fit with our more mature understanding of the real-world application needs. 3. Researching whether a simple webcam based approach can be used to ameliorate the maintenance and robustness problems with chemical sensors in lake water quality applications. 4. Promoting the use of, and continuing to add to the state of the art in, delay tolerant networking.
Funding Agency Enterprise Ireland
Programme Commercialisation Fund - €343,000
Type of Project
Date from 1/6/2005
Date to 1/12/2007
Person Months


More Research Projects>>>
 
Publications
Peer Reviewed
Brian McCormack, Dermot Geraghty, Margaret O'Mahony, Modelling of Surface Acoustic Wave Strain Sensors using Coupling-of-Modes Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics and Ferroelectrics, 58, 2011, p2461 - 2468
DOI
Brian Donohoe, Garret O'Donnell, Dermot Geraghty, Packaging considerations for a Surface Acoustic Wave Strain Sensor, IEEE Sensors, 2011
DOI
Brian Donohoe, Brian McCormack, Dermot Geraghty, Garret E. O'Donnell, Modelling the alignment sensitivity of a SAWR strain sensor to applied strain, IEEE Sensors, Limerick, Ireland, October 28, 2011, pp1665 - 1668
DOI
More Publications>>>
 

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