Hierarchical Adaptive Mesh Refinement Research Articles

Reacting condensed phase explosives in direct contact

In this article, we present a new formulation and an associated algorithm for the simultaneous numerical simulation of multiple condensed phase explosives in direct contact with each other, which may also be confined by (or interacting with one or more) compliant inert materials. Examples include composite rate-stick (i.e., involving two explosives in contact) problems, interaction of shock waves with chemically active particles in condensed-phase explosives, and devices such as detonators and boosters. There are several formulations that address the compliant or structural response of confiners and particles due to detonations, but the direct interaction of explosives remains a challenge for most formulations and algorithms. The proposed formulation addresses this problem by extending the conservation laws and mixture rules of an existing hybrid formulation (suitable for solving problems involving the coexistence of reactants and products in an explosive mixture and its immiscible interaction with inert materials) to model the interaction of multiple explosive mixtures. An algorithm for the solution of the resulting system of partial differential equations is presented, which includes a new robust method for the retrieval of the densities of the constituents of each explosive mixture. This is achieved by means of a multi-dimensional root-finding algorithm, which employs physical as well as mathematical considerations in order to converge to the correct solution. The algorithm is implemented in a hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement framework and validated against results from problems with known solutions. Additional case studies demonstrate that the method can simulate the interaction of detonation waves produced by military grade and commercial explosives in direct contact, each with its own distinct equation of state and reaction rate law.

A diffuse interface model of reactive-fluids and solid-dynamics

This article presents a multi-physics methodology for the numerical simulation of physical systems that involve the non-linear interaction of multi-phase reactive fluids and elastoplastic solids, inducing high strain-rates and high deformations. Each state of matter is governed by a single system of non-linear, inhomogeneous partial differential equations, which are solved simultaneously on the same computational grid, and do not require special treatment of immersed boundaries. To this end, the governing equations for solid and reactive multiphase fluid mechanics are written in the same mathematical form and are discretised on a regular Cartesian mesh. All phase and material boundaries are treated as diffuse interfaces. An interface-steepening technique is employed at material boundaries to keep interfaces sharp whilst maintaining the conservation properties of the system. These algorithms are implemented in a highly-parallelised hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement platform, and are verified and validated using numerical and experimental benchmarks. Results indicate very good agreement with experiment and an improvement of numerical performance compared to certain existing Eulerian methods, without loss of conservation.

Kinetic Methods for Solving Unsteady Problems with Jet Flows

The study of nonstationary rarefied gas flows is currently paid much attention. Such interest to these problems is caused by the creation of pulsed jets used for the deposition of thin films and special coatings on solid surfaces. However the problems of nonstationary rarefied gas flows have not been studied sufficiently fully because of their large computational complexity. In this paper the computational aspects of investigating the nonstationary flows of a reflected gas from a wall and flowing through a suddenly formed gap is considering. The objective of this study is to analyze the possible numerical kinetic approaches for solving such nonstationary problems and to identify the difficulties encountered in solving.When studying the gas flows in strong rarefaction regimes one should consider the Boltzmann kinetic equation, but its numerical implementation is rather laborious. In order to use more simple approaches based for example on approximation kinetic equations (Ellipsoidal-Statistical model, Shakhov model), it is important to estimate the difference of the solutions of the model equations and the Boltzmann equation. For this purpose two auxiliary problems are considered: reflection of the gas flow from the wall and outflow of the free jet into the rarefied background gas. Numerical solution of these problems shows a weak dependence of the solution on the type of the collision operator in the rarefied region, but a strong dependence on the velocity grid step . The detailed velocity grid is necessary to avoid non-monotonous behavior of macroparameters caused by the “ray effect”. To reduce numerical costs on detailed grid a hybrid method based on the synthesis of model equation and the Boltzmann equation is proposed. Such approach can be promising since it reduces the domain in which the Boltzmann collision integral should be used.The results presented in this paper were obtained using two different software packages Unified Flow Solver (UFS) [13] and Nesvetay 3D [14-15]. Note that UFS uses the discrete ordinate method for velocity space on a uniform grid and a hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement in physical space. The possibility of calculating both the Boltzmann equation and model equations is realized. The Nesvetay 3D complex was created to solve the Shakhov model equation, (S-model) and makes it possible to calculate on non-structured non uniform grids in velocity and physical spaces.Translated from Russian. Original text: Mathematics and Mathematical Modeling. 2018. no. 4. Pp. 27-44.

A scalable parallel finite element framework for growing geometries. Application to metal additive manufacturing

SummaryThis work introduces an innovative parallel fully‐distributed finite element framework for growing geometries and its application to metal additive manufacturing. It is well known that virtual part design and qualification in additive manufacturing requires highly accurate multiscale and multiphysics analyses. Only high performance computing tools are able to handle such complexity in time frames compatible with time‐to‐market. However, efficiency, without loss of accuracy, has rarely held the centre stage in the numerical community. Here, in contrast, the framework is designed to adequately exploit the resources of high‐end distributed‐memory machines. It is grounded on three building blocks: (1) hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement with octree‐based meshes; (2) a parallel strategy to model the growth of the geometry; and (3) state‐of‐the‐art parallel iterative linear solvers. Computational experiments consider the heat transfer analysis at the part scale of the printing process by powder‐bed technologies. After verification against a three‐dimensional (3D) benchmark, a strong‐scaling analysis assesses performance and identifies major sources of parallel overhead. A third numerical example examines the efficiency and robustness of (2) in a curved 3D shape. Unprecedented parallelism and scalability were achieved in this work. Hence, this framework contributes to take on higher complexity and/or accuracy, not only of part‐scale simulations of metal or polymer additive manufacturing but also in welding, sedimentation, atherosclerosis, or any other physical problem where the physical domain of interest grows in time.

Kinetic Methods for Solving Non-stationary Jet Flow Problems

The study of non-stationary rarefied gas flows is, currently, attracting a great deal of attention. Such an interest arises from creating the pulsed jets used for deposition of thin films and special coatings on the solid surfaces. However, the problems of non-stationary rarefied gas flows are still understudied because of their large computational complexity. The paper considers the computational aspects of investigating non-stationary movement of gas reflected from a wall and flowing through a suddenly formed gap. The study objective is to analyse the possible numerical kinetic approaches to solve such problems and identify the difficulties in their solving. When modeling the gas flows in strong rarefaction one should consider the Boltzmann kinetic equation, but its numerical implementation is rather time-consuming. In order to use more simple approaches based, for example, on approximation kinetic equations (Ellipsoidal-Statistical model, Shakhov model), it is important to estimate the difference between the solutions of the model equations and of the Boltzmann equation. For this purpose, two auxiliary problems are considered, namely reflection of the gas flow from the wall and outflow of the free jet into the rarefied background gas.A numerical solution of these problems shows a weak dependence of the solution on the type of the collision operator in the rarefied region, but at the same time a strong dependence of a behavior of the macro-parameters on the velocity grid step. The detailed velocity grid is necessary to avoid a non-monotonous behavior of the macro-parameters caused by so-called ray effect. To reduce computational costs of the detailed velocity grid solution, a hybrid method based on the synthesis of model equations and the Boltzmann equation is proposed. Such an approach can be promising since it reduces the domain in which the Boltzmann collision integral should be used.The article presents the results obtained using two different software packages, namely a Unified Flow Solver (UFS) [13] and a Nesvetay 3D software complex [14-15]. Note that the UFS uses the discrete ordinate method for velocity space on a uniform grid and a hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement in physical space. The possibility to calculate both the Boltzmann equation and the model equations is realized. The Nesvetay 3D software complex was created to solve the Shakhov model equation (S-model) for calculations based on non-structured non-uniform grids, both in velocity space and in physical one.

An adaptive multiblock high-order finite-volume method for solving the shallow-water equations on the sphere

We present a high-order finite-volume approach for solving the shallow-water equations on the sphere, using multiblock grids on the cubed-sphere. This approach combines a Runge--Kutta time discretization with a fourth-order accurate spatial discretization, and includes adaptive mesh refinement and refinement in time. Results of tests show fourth-order convergence for the shallow-water equations as well as for advection in a highly deformational flow. Hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement allows solution error to be achieved that is comparable to that obtained with uniform resolution of the most refined level of the hierarchy, but with many fewer operations.