Inciter

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Navier-Stokes solver for complex domains

Inciter is a fully asynchronous distributed-memory-parallel fluid solver for complex 3D engineering geometries. Computational domains of arbitrary shapes are discretized into tetrahedron elements and decomposed into small chunks assigned to different CPUs. The number of chunks may be more than the number of CPUs allowing overdecomposition, which is useful for effective automatic load balancing across large computers. The solution along partition boundaries, that exists on multiple processing elements, is made consistent with asynchronous communication which enables overlapping parallel computation, communication, input, and output (I/O).

Inciter can solve the Euler equations, modeling single-, and multi-material compressible flow, using continuous and discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods, with solution-adaptive mesh-, and polynomial-degree refinement, enabling dynamically concentrating compute resources to regions with interesting physics. Current development continues in the following directions: (A) solvers for multi-material flows (single velocity, multiple densities, multiple mass fractions, and multiple internal energies) solving the Euler equations, (B) polynomial adaptation for both single-, and multi-material flows, (C) productize the solvers (i.e., increase robustness, user-friendliness, and add practicality features), (D) implementation of 3D parallel mesh-to-mesh solution transfer to enable fluid-structure interaction problems, coupling compressible flow with the kinematics of rigid body motion of objects embedded in a fluid flow, allowing the computation of body motion in response to aerodynamic forces, and (E) implementing new equations of state, suitable for detonation products, to enable blast simulations.

Inciter currently has three different family of fluid dynamics algorithms:

  1. DiagCG, a node-centered continuous Galerkin finite element method, combining flux-corrected transport with Lax-Wendroff time stepping, see DiagCG hydrodynamics for a high-level description and Inciter papers for more details.
  2. ALECG, a node-centered continuous Galerkin finite element method, featuring Riemann solvers and MUSCL reconstruction on cell-edges, combined with Runge-Kutta time stepping, see ALECG hydrodynamics for a high-level description and Inciter papers for more details.
  3. DG, a cell-centered discontinuous Galerkin finte element method, containing multiple solvers for both single-, and multi-material flows, see Single-material DG hydrodynamics and Multi-material DG hydrodynamics for high-level descriptions and Inciter papers for more details.
  4. FV, a cell-centered finte volume method for multi-material flows, see inciter_fv for a high-level description and Inciter papers" for more details.

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