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At least 1,279 records · Page 71

Parallel three-dimensional simulations of quasi-static elastoplastic solids

Hypo-elastoplasticity is a flexible framework for modeling the mechanics of many hard materials under small elastic deformation and large plastic deformation. Under typical loading rates, most laboratory tests of these materials happen in the quasi-static limit, but there are few existing numerical methods tailor-made for this physical regime. Here, we extend to three dimensions a recent projection method for simulating quasi-static hypo-elastoplastic materials. The method is based on a mathematical correspondence to the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, where the projection method of Chorin (1968) is an established numerical technique. We develop and utilize a three-dimensional parallel geometric multigrid solver employed to solve a linear system for the quasi-static projection. Our method is tested through simulation of three-dimensional shear band nucleation and growth, a precursor to failure in many materials. As an example system, we employ a physical model of a bulk metallic glass based on the shear transformation zone theory, but the method can be applied to any elastoplasticity model. We consider several examples of three-dimensional shear banding, and examine shear band formation in physically realistic materials with heterogeneous initial conditions under both simple shear deformation and boundary conditions inspired by friction welding.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An efficient high-order numerical solver for diffusion equations with strong anisotropy

In this paper, we present an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin finite element scheme for solving diffusion problems with strong anisotropy arising in magnetized plasmas for fusion applications. Additionally, we demonstrate the accuracy produced by the high-order scheme and develop an efficient preconditioning technique to solve the corresponding linear system, which is robust to the mesh size and anisotropy of the problem. Several numerical tests are provided to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

AETHER: A simulation platform for inductively coupled plasma

An in-house code is developed to simulate the inductively coupled plasma (ICP). The model comprises the fluid, electromagnetic and transformer submodels. Fluid equations are solved to evaluate the plasma flow parameters, including the plasma and neutral densities, ion and neutral velocities, electron flux, electron temperature, and electric potential. The model relies on the ambipolar approximation and offers the evaluation of plasma parameters without solving the sheath region. The electromagnetic model handles the calculation of the electric and magnetic fields using the magnetic vector potential. The transformer model captures the effect of the matching circuit utilized in laboratory experiments for RF power deposition. The continuity and momentum equations are solved using finite volume method. The energy, electric potential, and magnetic vector potential equations are solved using finite difference method. The resulting linear systems of equations are solved with iterative solvers including Jacobi and GMRES. The code is written using the C++ programming language, it works in parallel and has graphical user interface. The model is applied to study ICP characteristics of a plasma confined within a cylindrical chamber with dielectric walls for two different power deposition cases. The results obtained from the developed model are verified using the plasma module of COMSOL Multiphysics. The model is also applied to a plasma source configuration, and it is demonstrated that there is an overall increase in the plasma potential when current is extracted from ICP with a biased wall electrode.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

An approximate framework for quantum transport calculation with model order reduction

A new approximate computational framework is proposed for computing the non-equilibrium charge density in the context of the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method for quantum mechanical transport problems. The framework consists of a new formulation, called the X-formulation, for single-energy density calculation based on the solution of sparse linear systems, and a projection-based nonlinear model order reduction (MOR) approach to address the large number of energy points required for large applied biases. The advantages of the new methods are confirmed by numerical experiments.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Scalable algorithms for three-field mixed finite element coupled poromechanics

We introduce a class of block preconditioners for accelerating the iterative solution of coupled poromechanics equations based on a three-field formulation. The use of a displacement/velocity/pressure mixed finite-element method combined with a first order backward difference formula for the approximation of time derivatives produces a sequence of linear systems with a 3 x 3 unsymmetric and indefinite block matrix. The preconditioners are obtained by approximating the two-level Schur complement with the aid of physically-based arguments that can be also generalized in a purely algebraic approach. A theoretical and experimental analysis is presented that provides evidence of the robustness, efficiency and scalability of the proposed algorithm. In conclusion, the performance is also assessed for a real-world challenging consolidation experiment of a shallow formation.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Linearly first- and second-order, unconditionally energy stable schemes for the phase field crystal model

In this paper, we develop a series of linear, unconditionally energy stable numerical schemes for solving the classical phase field crystal model. The temporal discretizations are based on the first order Euler method, the second order backward differentiation formulas (BDF2) and the second order Crank–Nicolson method, respectively. The schemes lead to linear elliptic equations to be solved at each time step, and the induced linear systems are symmetric positive definite. We prove that all three schemes are unconditionally energy stable rigorously. Various classical numerical experiments in 2D and 3D are performed to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed schemes.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A stable high-order perturbation of surfaces method for numerical simulation of diffraction problems in triply layered media

The accurate numerical simulation of linear waves interacting with periodic layered media is a crucial capability in engineering applications. In this contribution we study the stable and high-order accurate numerical simulation of the interaction of linear, time-harmonic waves with a periodic, triply layered medium with irregular interfaces. In contrast with volumetric approaches, High-Order Perturbation of Surfaces (HOPS) algorithms are inexpensive interfacial methods which rapidly and recursively estimate scattering returns by perturbation of the interface shape. In comparison with Boundary Integral/Element Methods, the stable HOPS algorithm we describe here does not require specialized quadrature rules, periodization strategies, or the solution of dense non-symmetric positive definite linear systems. In addition, the algorithm is provably stable as opposed to other classical HOPS approaches. With numerical experiments we show the remarkable efficiency, fidelity, and accuracy one can achieve with an implementation of this algorithm.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Application of the inverse fast multipole method as a preconditioner in a 3D Helmholtz boundary element method

Here we investigate an efficient preconditioning of iterative methods (such as GMRES) for solving dense linear systems Ax = b that follow from a boundary element method (BEM) for the 3D Helmholtz equation, focusing on the low-frequency regime. While matrix–vector products in GMRES can be accelerated through the low-frequency fast multipole method (LFFMM), the BEM often remains computationally expensive due to the large number of GMRES iterations. We propose the application of the inverse fast multipole method (IFMM) as a preconditioner to accelerate the convergence of GMRES. The IFMM is in essence an approximate direct solver that uses a multilevel hierarchical decomposition and low-rank approximations. The proposed IFMM-based preconditioning has a tunable parameter ε that balances the cost to construct a preconditioner M, which is an approximation of A -1 , and the cost to perform the iterative process by means of M. Namely, using a small (respectively, large) value of ε takes a long (respectively, short) time to construct M, while the number of iterations can be small (respectively, large). A comprehensive set of numerical examples involving various boundary value problems with complicated geometries and mixed boundary conditions is presented to validate the efficiency of the proposed method. We show that the IFMM preconditioner (with a nearly optimal ε of 10 -2 ) clearly outperforms some common preconditioners for the BEM, achieving 1.2–10.8 times speed-up of the computations, in particular when the scale of the underlying scatterer is about five wavelengths or more. In addition, the IFMM preconditioner is capable of solving complicated problems (in a reasonable amount of time) that BD preconditioner can not.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Implicit mesh discontinuous Galerkin methods and interfacial gauge methods for high-order accurate interface dynamics, with applications to surface tension dynamics, rigid body fluid–structure interaction, and free surface flow: Part I

In this two-part paper, a high-order accurate implicit mesh discontinuous Galerkin (dG) framework is developed for fluid interface dynamics, facilitating precise computation of interfacial fluid flow in evolving geometries. The framework uses implicitly defined meshes—wherein a reference quadtree or octree grid is combined with an implicit representation of evolving interfaces and moving domain boundaries—and allows physically prescribed interfacial jump conditions to be imposed or captured with high-order accuracy. Part one discusses the design of the framework, including: (i) high-order quadrature for implicitly defined elements and faces; (ii) high-order accurate discretisation of scalar and vector-valued elliptic partial differential equations with interfacial jumps in ellipticity coefficient, leading to optimal-order accuracy in the maximum norm and discrete linear systems that are symmetric positive (semi)definite; (iii) the design of incompressible fluid flow projection operators, which except for the influence of small penalty parameters, are discretely idempotent; and (iv) the design of geometric multigrid methods for elliptic interface problems on implicitly defined meshes and their use as preconditioners for the conjugate gradient method. Also discussed is a variety of aspects relating to moving interfaces, including: (v) dG discretisations of the level set method on implicitly defined meshes; (vi) transferring state between evolving implicit meshes; (vii) preserving mesh topology to accurately compute temporal derivatives; (viii) high-order accurate reinitialisation of level set functions; and (ix) the integration of adaptive mesh refinement. In part two, several applications of the implicit mesh dG framework in two and three dimensions are presented, including examples of single phase flow in nontrivial geometry, surface tension-driven two phase flow with phase-dependent fluid density and viscosity, rigid body fluid–structure interaction, and free surface flow. A class of techniques known as interfacial gauge methods is adopted to solve the corresponding incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, which, compared to archetypical projection methods, have a weaker coupling between fluid velocity, pressure, and interface position, and allow high-order accurate numerical methods to be developed more easily. Convergence analyses conducted throughout the work demonstrate high-order accuracy in the maximum norm for all of the applications considered; for example, fourth-order spatial accuracy in fluid velocity, pressure, and interface location is demonstrated for surface tension-driven two phase flow in 2D and 3D. Specific application examples include: vortex shedding in nontrivial geometry, capillary wave dynamics revealing fine-scale flow features, falling rigid bodies tumbling in unsteady flow, and free surface flow over a submersed obstacle, as well as high Reynolds number soap bubble oscillation dynamics and vortex shedding induced by a type of Plateau–Rayleigh instability in water ripple free surface flow. In conclusion, these last two examples compare numerical results with experimental data and serve as an additional means of validation; they also reveal physical phenomena not visible in the experiments, highlight how small-scale interfacial features develop and affect macroscopic dynamics, and demonstrate the wide range of spatial scales often at play in interfacial fluid flow.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Implicit mesh discontinuous Galerkin methods and interfacial gauge methods for high-order accurate interface dynamics, with applications to surface tension dynamics, rigid body fluid–structure interaction, and free surface flow: Part II

Here, in this two-part paper, a high-order accurate implicit mesh discontinuous Galerkin (dG) framework is developed for fluid interface dynamics, facilitating precise computation of interfacial fluid flow in evolving geometries. The framework uses implicitly defined meshes—wherein a reference quadtree or octree grid is combined with an implicit representation of evolving interfaces and moving domain boundaries—and allows physically prescribed interfacial jump conditions to be imposed or captured with high-order accuracy. Part one discusses the design of the framework, including: (i) high-order quadrature for implicitly defined elements and faces; (ii) high-order accurate discretisation of scalar and vector-valued elliptic partial differential equations with interfacial jumps in ellipticity coefficient, leading to optimal-order accuracy in the maximum norm and discrete linear systems that are symmetric positive (semi)definite; (iii) the design of incompressible fluid flow projection operators, which except for the influence of small penalty parameters, are discretely idempotent; and (iv) the design of geometric multigrid methods for elliptic interface problems on implicitly defined meshes and their use as preconditioners for the conjugate gradient method. Also discussed is a variety of aspects relating to moving interfaces, including: (v) dG discretisations of the level set method on implicitly defined meshes; (vi) transferring state between evolving implicit meshes; (vii) preserving mesh topology to accurately compute temporal derivatives; (viii) high-order accurate reinitialisation of level set functions; and (ix) the integration of adaptive mesh refinement. In part two, several applications of the implicit mesh dG framework in two and three dimensions are presented, including examples of single phase flow in nontrivial geometry, surface tension-driven two phase flow with phase-dependent fluid density and viscosity, rigid body fluid–structure interaction, and free surface flow. A class of techniques known as interfacial gauge methods is adopted to solve the corresponding incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, which, compared to archetypical projection methods, have a weaker coupling between fluid velocity, pressure, and interface position, and allow high-order accurate numerical methods to be developed more easily. Convergence analyses conducted throughout the work demonstrate high-order accuracy in the maximum norm for all of the applications considered; for example, fourth-order spatial accuracy in fluid velocity, pressure, and interface location is demonstrated for surface tension-driven two phase flow in 2D and 3D. Specific application examples include: vortex shedding in nontrivial geometry, capillary wave dynamics revealing fine-scale flow features, falling rigid bodies tumbling in unsteady flow, and free surface flow over a submersed obstacle, as well as high Reynolds number soap bubble oscillation dynamics and vortex shedding induced by a type of Plateau–Rayleigh instability in water ripple free surface flow. In these last two examples compare numerical results with experimental data and serve as an additional means of validation; they also reveal physical phenomena not visible in the experiments, highlight how small-scale interfacial features develop and affect macroscopic dynamics, and demonstrate the wide range of spatial scales often at play in interfacial fluid flow.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A new approach to three-dimensional neutron transport solution based on the method of characteristics and linear axial approximation

A new approach based on the method of characteristics (MOC) is proposed to solve the neutron transport equation. A new three-dimensional (3D) spatial discretization is applied to avoid the instability issue of the transverse leakage iteration of the traditional 2D/1D approach. In this new approach, the axial and radial variables are discretized in two different ways: the linear expansion is performed in the axial direction, then, the 3D solution of the angular flux is transformed to be the planar solution of 2D angular expansion moments, which are solved by the planar MOC sweeping. Based on the boundary and interface continuity conditions, the 2D expansion moment solution is equivalently transformed to be the solution of the axially averaged angular flux. Using the piecewise averaged angular flux at the top and bottom surfaces of 3D meshes, the planes are coupled to give the 3D angular flux distribution. The 3D CMFD linear system is established from the surface net current of every 3D pin-mesh to accelerate the convergence of power iteration. The STREAM code is extended to be capable of handling 3D problems based on the new approach. Several benchmarks are tested to verify its feasibility and accuracy, including the 3D homogeneous benchmarks and heterogeneous benchmarks. The computational sensitivity is discussed. The results show good accuracy in all tests. With the CMFD acceleration, the convergence is stable. In addition, a pin-cell problem with void gap is calculated. This shows the advantage compared to the traditional 2D/1D MOC methods.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Computing resonant modes of accelerator cavities by solving nonlinear eigenvalue problems via rational approximation

Here, we present an efficient and reliable algorithm for solving a class of nonlinear eigenvalue problems arising from the modeling of particle accelerator cavities. The eigenvalue nonlinearity in these problems results from the use of waveguides to couple external power sources or to allow certain excited electromagnetic modes to exit the cavity. We use a rational approximation to reduce the nonlinear eigenvalue problem first to a rational eigenvalue problem. We then apply a special linearization procedure to turn the rational eigenvalue problem into a larger linear eigenvalue problem with the same eigenvalues, which can be solved by existing iterative methods. By using a compact scheme to represent both the linearized operator and the eigenvectors to be computed, we obtain a numerical method that only involves solving linear systems of equations of the same dimension as the original nonlinear eigenvalue problem. We refer to this method as a compact rational Krylov (CORK) method. We implemented the CORK method in the Omega3P module of the Advanced Computational Electromagnetic 3D Parallel (ACE3P) simulation suite and validated it by comparing the computed cavity resonant frequencies and damping Q factors of a small model problem to those obtained from a fitting procedure that uses frequency responses computed by another ACE3P module called S3P. We also used the CORK method to compute trapped modes damped in an ideal eight 9-cell SRF cavity cryomodule. This was the first time it was possible to compute these modes directly. The damping Q factors of the computed modes match well with those measured in experiments and the difference in resonant frequencies is within the range introduced by cavity imperfection. Therefore, the CORK method is an extremely valuable tool for computational cavity design.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Efficient Fourier basis particle simulation

The standard particle-in-cell algorithm suffers from grid heating. There exists a gridless alternative which bypasses the deposition step and calculates each Fourier mode of the charge density directly from the particle positions. We show that a gridless method can be computed efficiently through the use of an Unequally Spaced Fast Fourier Transform (USFFT) algorithm. After a spectral field solve, the forces on the particles are calculated via the inverse USFFT (a rapid solution of an approximate linear system). We provide one and two dimensional implementations of this algorithm with an asymptotic runtime of O ( N p + N m D log ⁡ N m D ) for each iteration, identical to the standard PIC algorithm (where N p is the number of particles, N m is the number of Fourier modes, and D is the spatial dimensionality of the problem). We demonstrate superior energy conservation and reduced noise, as well as convergence of the energy conservation at small time steps.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Multigrid deflation for Lattice QCD

Computing the trace of the inverse of large matrices is typically addressed through statistical methods. Deflating out the lowest eigenvectors or singular vectors of the matrix reduces the variance of the trace estimator. This work summarizes our efforts to reduce the computational cost of computing the deflation space while achieving the desired variance reduction for Lattice QCD applications. Previous efforts computed the lower part of the singular spectrum of the Dirac operator by using an eigensolver preconditioned with a multigrid linear system solver. Despite the improvement in performance in those applications, as the problem size grows the runtime and storage demands of this approach will eventually dominate the stochastic estimation part of the computation. In this work, we propose to compute the deflation space in one of the following two ways. First, by using an inexact eigensolver on the Hermitian, but maximally indefinite, operator. Second, by exploiting the fact that the multigrid prolongator for this operator is rich in components toward the lower part of the singular spectrum. We show experimentally that the inexact eigensolver can approximate the lower part of the spectrum even for ill-conditioned operators. Also, the deflation based on the multigrid prolongator is more efficient to compute and apply, and, despite its limited ability to approximate the fine level spectrum, it obtains similar variance reduction on the trace estimator as deflating with approximate eigenvectors from the fine level operator.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Towards sharp error analysis of extended Lagrangian molecular dynamics

The extended Lagrangian molecular dynamics (XLMD) method provides a useful framework for reducing the computational cost of a class of molecular dynamics simulations with constrained latent variables. The XLMD method relaxes the constraints by introducing a fictitious mass ε for the latent variables and solving a set of singularly perturbed ordinary differential equations. While favorable numerical performance of XLMD has been demonstrated in several different contexts in the past decade, mathematical analysis of the method remains scarce. Here, we propose the first error analysis of the XLMD method in the context of a classical polarizable force field model. While the dynamics with respect to the atomic degrees of freedom are general and nonlinear, the key mathematical simplification of the polarizable force field model is that the constraints on the latent variables are given by a linear system of equations. We prove that when the initial value of the latent variables is compatible in a sense that we define, XLMD converges as the fictitious mass ε is made small with $\mathscr{O}$(ε) error for the atomic degrees of freedom and with $\mathscr{O}$($\sqrt{ε}$) error for the latent variables, when the dimension of the latent variable d' is 1. Furthermore, when the initial value of the latent variables is improved to be optimally compatible in a certain sense, we prove that the convergence rate can be improved to $\mathscr{O}$(ε) for the latent variables as well. Numerical results verify that both estimates are sharp not only for d'=1, but also for arbitrary d'. In the setting of general d', we do obtain convergence, but with the non-sharp rate of $\mathscr{O}$($\sqrt{ε}$) for both the atomic and latent variables.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Accelerating eigenvalue computation for nuclear structure calculations via perturbative corrections

Subspace projection methods utilizing perturbative corrections have been proposed for computing the lowest few eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of large Hamiltonian matrices. In this paper, we build upon these methods and introduce the term Subspace Projection with Perturbative Corrections (SPPC) method to refer to this approach. We tailor the SPPC for nuclear many-body Hamiltonians represented in a truncated configuration interaction subspace, i.e., the no-core shell model (NCSM). We use the hierarchical structure of the NCSM Hamiltonian to partition the Hamiltonian as the sum of two matrices. The first matrix corresponds to the Hamiltonian represented in a small configuration space, whereas the second is viewed as the perturbation to the first matrix. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the first matrix can be computed efficiently. Because of the split, perturbative corrections to the eigenvectors of the first matrix can be obtained efficiently from the solutions of a sequence of linear systems of equations defined in the small configuration space. These correction vectors can be combined with the approximate eigenvectors of the first matrix to construct a subspace from which more accurate approximations of the desired eigenpairs can be obtained. We show by numerical examples that the SPPC method can be more efficient than conventional iterative methods for solving large-scale eigenvalue problems such as the Lanczos, block Lanczos and the locally optimal block preconditioned conjugate gradient (LOBPCG) method. The method can also be combined with other methods to avoid convergence stagnation.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Numerically approximating centrality for graph ranking guarantees

Many real-world datasets can be represented as graphs. Using iterative solvers to approximate graph centrality measures allows us to obtain a ranking vector on the nodes of the graph, consisting of a number for each vertex in the graph identifying its relative importance. In this study the centrality measures we use are Katz Centrality and PageRank. Given an approximate solution, we use the residual to accurately estimate how much of the ranking matches the ranking given by the exact solution. Using probabilistic matrix norms, we obtain bounds on the accuracy of the approximation compared to the exact solution with respect to the highly ranked nodes and apply numerical analysis to the computation of centrality with iterative methods. This relates the numerical accuracy of the linear solver to the data analysis accuracy of finding the correct ranking. In particular, we answer the question of which pairwise rankings are reliable given an approximate solution to the linear system. Experiments on many real-world undirected and directed networks up to several million vertices and several hundred million edges validate our theory and show that we are able to accurately estimate large portions of the approximation. We also analyze the difference between global centrality scores and personalized scores (w.r.t. specific seed vertices). By analyzing convergence error, we develop confidence in the ranking schemes of data mining. We show we are able to accurately guarantee ranking of vertices with an approximation to centrality metrics faster than current methods.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗