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At least 55 records · Page 3

An extended Vlasov–Fokker–Planck approach for kinetic simulations of laser plasmas

Vlasov–Fokker–Planck simulation codes occupy an important niche in modeling laser-produced plasmas, since they are well suited to studying the effect of collisions on electron kinetic phenomena, especially energy transport. One of the most important elements of energy transport is the absorption of laser light by the plasma; however, simulating this in detail requires resolving oscillations of the laser light, whose characteristic timescale is orders of magnitude shorter than the simulation time needed to study transport physics. For this reason, most Vlasov–Fokker–Planck codes used to study electron transport in laser plasmas rely on simplified models of the laser–plasma coupling. Their underlying assumptions nominally preclude their use for modeling laser light having short-scale structure in space or time, such as broadband lasers. In this work, we derive a more general computational framework suitable for arbitrarily structured laser fields. Furthermore, our approach is based on an extended set of Vlasov–Fokker–Planck equations that separately solve for the low- and high-frequency plasma response. We implement these extended Vlasov–Fokker–Planck equations in the spherical harmonic code K2 and demonstrate the performance of the method on several laser absorption test problems, with particular attention to the judicious selection of time steps, time integrators, and spherical harmonic truncation, according to the intensity and spectrum of the laser light under consideration. Comparison with the widely used Langdon absorption operator shows the Langdon operator performs remarkably well for predicting laser heating in the simple cases considered here, even in situations that would seem to violate its underlying assumptions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Detection, monitoring, and determination of location of changes in metallic structures using multimode acoustic signals

Acoustic transducers generate and receive acoustic signals at multiple locations along a surface of rigid structure, wherein longitudinal spacing between transducer locations define measurement zones. Acoustic signals with chosen amplitude-time-frequency characteristics excite multiple vibration modes in the structure within each zone. Small mechanical changes in inspection zones lead to scattering and attenuation of broadband acoustic signals, which are detectable as changes in received signal characteristics as part of a through-transmission technique. Additional use of short, narrowband pulse acoustic signals as part of a pulse-echo technique allows determination of the relative location of the mechanical change within each zone based on the differential delay profiles. For accurate acoustic modeling and simulation, the mesh size, time step, time delay, and time-window size are optimized. Frequency normalization of the Short-Time Fourier Transform of acoustic response output improves experiment-simulation cross-validation. Applications of the method to structures with arbitrarily complex geometries are also demonstrated.

Findikoglu, Alp Tugrul↗

Breaking the Million-Electron and 1 EFLOP/s Barriers: Biomolecular-Scale Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Using MP2 Potentials

The accurate simulation of complex biochemical phenomena has historically been hampered by the computational requirements of high-fidelity molecular-modeling techniques. Quantum mechanical methods, such as ab initio wave-function (WF) theory, deliver the desired accuracy, but have impractical scaling for modeling biosystems with thousands of atoms. Combining molecular fragmentation with MP2 perturbation theory, this study presents an innovative approach that enables biomolecular-scale ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations at WF theory level. Leveraging the resolution-of-the-identity approximation for Hartree-Fock and MP2 gradients, our approach eliminates computationally intensive four-center integrals and their gradients, while achieving near-peak performance on modern GPU architectures. The introduction of asynchronous time steps minimizes time step latency, overlapping computational phases and effectively mitigating load imbalances. Utilizing up to 9,400 nodes of Frontier and achieving 59% (1006.7 PFLOP/s) of its double-precision floating-point peak, our method enables us to break the million-electron and 1EFLOP/s barriers for AIMD simulations with quantum accuracy.

Kurzak, Jakub↗

Integrating a ponderomotive guiding center algorithm into a quasi-static particle-in-cell code based on azimuthal mode decomposition

High fidelity modeling of plasma based acceleration (PBA) requires the use of three dimensional, fully nonlinear, and kinetic descriptions based on the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. In PBA an intense particle beam or laser (driver) propagates through a tenuous plasma whereby it excites a plasma wave wake. Three-dimensional PIC algorithms based on the quasi-static approximation (QSA) have been successfully applied to efficiently model the interaction between relativistic charged particle beams and plasma. In a QSA PIC algorithm, the plasma response to a charged particle beam or laser driver is calculated based on forces from the driver and self-consistent forces from the QSA form of Maxwell's equations. These fields are then used to advance the charged particle beam or laser forward by a large time step. Since the time step is not limited by the regular Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition that constrains a standard 3D fully electromagnetic PIC code, a 3D QSA PIC code can achieve orders of magnitude speedup in performance. Recently, a new hybrid QSA PIC algorithm that combines another speedup technique known as an azimuthal Fourier decomposition has been proposed and implemented. This hybrid algorithm decomposes the electromagnetic fields, charge and current density into azimuthal harmonics and only the Fourier coefficients need to be updated, which can reduce the algorithmic complexity of a 3D code to that of a 2D code. Modeling the laser-plasma interaction in a full 3D electromagnetic PIC algorithm is very computationally expensive due the enormous disparity of physical scales to be resolved. In the QSA the laser is modeled using the ponderomotive guiding center (PGC) approach. We describe how to implement a PGC algorithm compatible for the QSA PIC algorithms based on the azimuthal mode expansion. Here this algorithm permits time steps orders of magnitude larger than the cell size and it can be asynchronously parallelized. Details on how this is implemented into the QSA PIC code that utilizes an azimuthal mode expansion, QPAD, are also described. Benchmarks and comparisons between a fully 3D explicit PIC code (OSIRIS), as well as a few examples related to laser wakefield acceleration, are presented.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quasi-Steady Simulation of Glaze Ice Accretion and Heat Transfer in the Supercooled Large Droplet Regime in Atmospheric Turbulent Air Flow

Abstract To avoid the use of a computationally intensive full unsteady simulation while providing an accurate solution, a quasi-steady simulation has been performed to study glaze and mixed ice accretion in the supercooled large droplet (SLD) regime in turbulent flow of atmospheric air. We have attempted to find the minimum time-step necessary to adequately simulate the icing process on an airfoil surface. Based on node displacement, a mesh morphing scheme has been adopted in the computations to account for the moving boundaries that are caused by the continuous ice buildup. We have modeled ice accretion on an airfoil surface for a time period of 232 s using several time steps. At each time-step we solved the steady-state conservation equations for the air and droplet phases and then used the results as initial conditions for the next time position. The magnitude of the time-step ranged from a least accurate two-shot simulation (where the time-step is 116 s) to a most accurate 2320-shot simulation (where the time-step is 0.1 s). In-between these two extreme time steps, we have performed a three-shot simulation (where the time-step is 77.33 s), a four-shot simulation (where the time-step is 58 s), a six-shot simulation (where the time-step is 38.67 s), a 46-shot simulation (where the time-step is 5 s), and a 232-shot simulation (where the time-step is 1 s). We have done so to find out the degree of accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the multishot simulation approach and to find out the appropriate time-step needed for a successful and valid quasi-steady simulation. A valid quasi-steady simulation needs to use a time-step that is small enough to reproduce the full time-dependent solution within a very small error band. We have found that both the 1 s and the 0.1 s time steps produce virtually identical results. This is the primary litmus test that proves the validity of the quasi-steady-state assumption. The results adopted in this paper are thus all based on the more conservative 0.1 s time-step. In the process of performing the simulations, remeshing was required in order to maintain the grid density in zones of high curvature to be able to capture the full physics in those zones. After successfully modeling glaze ice accretion over the airfoil surface using the 0.1 s quasi-steady simulation approach, the effects of supercooled large droplets (SLDs) impacting the surface have been examined and presented in terms of the variation of the local collection efficiency, the water film thickness, and the heat transfer rate. Examination of the variation of the angle that the ice horn makes with the airfoil chord line demonstrated a 20% improvement in angle prediction when the time-step is reduced from 116 s to 0.1 s. The analysis also reveals a 12% or 8.5% increase in the maximum collection efficiency, βmax, depending on whether the value of the liquid water content (LWC) has been doubled from 0.5 g/m3 to 1 g/m3, or the value of the freestream velocity has been doubled from 75 m/s to 150 m/s, respectively. Because of the need to monitor the local collection efficiency and convective heat fluxes at each shot (regardless of the number of shots employed), the approach adopted here was found to be effective in successively and successfully reproducing the curvature of the glaze ice horn.

Engineering↗

An Orthogonal Recursive Bisection (ORB) Based Time Advancement Algorithm for CFD-DEM Solvers

The time integration of the granular phase in coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) – discrete element method (DEM) simulations presents a unique computational challenge brought about by the large variations in particle collisional time scales. Particles in the dilute regions of the computational domain can be advanced with large time steps while dense regions require much smaller time increments. However, the time step size in most solvers is globally set as the limit for accuracy and stability imposed by the collisions and is typically orders of magnitude less than that required away from collisions. This work addresses this precise issue and provides a strategy to avoid the use of a global conservative small time step size for the entire set of particles.A novel time stepping algorithm for CFD-DEM solvers using a partitioning approach using orthogonal recursive bisection (ORB) that allows for variable time steps among particles is described and its computational performance is compared against baseline explicit methods, typically used in several CFD-DEM solvers. ORB has advantages of being relatively quick and easy to update incrementally and has the required heuristic behavior (i.e., it will split the region in half with a cluster on each side) when groups of particles are well separated (clustered). The algorithm presented in this work uses a local time stepping approach to resolve collisional time scales for subsets of particles that are present at the leaves of the ORB, thereby resulting in substantial reduction of computational cost. The parallel implementation of this method where a ``knapsack” algorithm is used in tandem with ORB for effective load-balancing is also presented, where a best possible partitioning is obtained based on number of particles and local time-stepping costs. The algorithm is tested against benchmark problems with varying particle distributions that include fluidized bed and riser flow scenarios. Preliminary results indicate that the approach is 2-3X faster than traditional explicit methods for problems that involve both dense and dilute regions, while maintaining the same level of accuracy.

adaptive timestepping↗

Unraveling Hidden Order and Dynamics in a Heterogeneous Ferroelectric System Using Machine Learning

We uploaded two batches of datasets: Batch-a) Equilibrium dynamics at a constant temperature at zero electric-field, with one trajectory each for 4-different defect structures (i.e. SETs 1 to 4). Each trajectory has a time-step of 0.25 fs, and is run for 7775000 time-steps, with snapshots written out every 4 time-steps (i.e. every 1fs); and Batch-b) Non-Equilibrium dynamics at a constant temperature with the same 0.25 fs time-step, but data dumped every 500 times-steps (i.e. every 125fs) for each of the SETs. The total trajectory of each defect structure (i.e. each SETs 1 to 4) is 2800000 time-steps (5600 snapshots), with stepping of electric-field by 0.01 V/Ã…, after every 100,000 time-steps (i.e. every 200 snapshots), from E=0 to E=0.05 V/Ã… to E = -0.05 V/Ã… to E=0.05 V/Ã….

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Full time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulation of the SPARC tokamak: actuator design for particle and divertor condition control *

Abstract This paper presents the application of full time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulations for actuator design in the SPARC tokamak. This study employs both the EIRENE module, a neutral solver, and the B2.5 plasma module in a time-dependent mode. This is in contrast to most SOLPS simulations, which focus on steady-state solutions, where the neutral distribution is evolved without any time limit or for a time step of 1 ⋅ 10 − 3 second, which is several orders of magnitude larger than the fluid plasma time step. The time-dependent EIRENE was tested with a fixed B2.5 background and compared with a simple conductance based model in a simplified pump chamber geometry. This comparison aimed to verify the reliability of the neutral relaxation timescale derived from the time-dependent EIRENE. Subsequently, a full time-dependent simulation was performed in a realistic geometry, with the Monte-Carlo neutral time step synchronized with the plasma fluid time step. The numerical setup of the code, including relative time steps and the size of the census data used to store Monte-Carlo particle information is considered. The full-time dependent simulations are then applied to inform the design of the SPARC louver structure, which affects divertor plasma parameters by regulating the neutral conductance from the divertor to the pump. The response of the plasma and neutral parameters was captured on a timescale that enables the design of the actuator to consider time-dependent control capability. It was found that changing the louver opacity has an equivalent effect as varying the gas throughput via puff actuation. Therefore, equivalent divertor plasma conditions can be obtained from both actuators, while the neutral pressure distribution in the pump and divertor differs for each actuator.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

CFL Optimized Forward–Backward Runge–Kutta Schemes for the Shallow-Water Equations

Abstract We present the formulation and optimization of a Runge–Kutta-type time-stepping scheme for solving the shallow-water equations, aimed at substantially increasing the effective allowable time step over that of comparable methods. This scheme, called FB-RK(3,2), uses weighted forward–backward averaging of thickness data to advance the momentum equation. The weights for this averaging are chosen with an optimization process that employs a von Neumann–type analysis, ensuring that the weights maximize the admittable Courant number. Through a simplified local truncation error analysis and numerical experiments, we show that the method is at least second-order in time for any choice of weights and exhibits low dispersion and dissipation errors for well-resolved waves. Further, we show that an optimized FB-RK(3,2) can take time steps up to 2.8 times as large as a popular three-stage, third-order strong stability-preserving Runge–Kutta method in a quasi-linear test case. In fully nonlinear shallow-water test cases relevant to oceanic and atmospheric flows, FB-RK(3,2) outperforms SSPRK3 in admittable time step by factors roughly between 1.6 and 2.2, making the scheme approximately twice as computationally efficient with little to no effect on solution quality. Significance Statement The purpose of this work is to develop and optimize time-stepping schemes for models relevant to oceanic and atmospheric flows. Specifically, for the shallow-water equations we optimize for schemes that can take time steps as large as possible while retaining solution quality. We find that our optimized schemes can take time steps between 1.6 and 2.2 times larger than schemes that cost the same number of floating point operations, translating directly to a corresponding speedup. Our ultimate goal is to use these schemes in climate-scale simulations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗