It has been over a decade since the first experimental data from gold nuclei collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider suggested hydrodynamic behavior. Early ideal hydrodynamical models ignored the large longitudinal gradients that imply viscosity playing an important role in the dynamics. In addition, at that time, much less was known about the equation of state predicted by lattice calculations of quantum chromodynamics and the effects of late (dilute) stage rescattering were handled within the hydrodynamic framework. This dissertation presents a three-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics code with a realistic equation of state coupled consistently to a hadron resonance gas calculation. This code is capable of making significant comparisons to experimental data as part of an effort to learn about the structure of experimental constraints on the microscopic interactions of dense, hot quark matter.
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