The implicit 2D3V particle-in-cell (PIC) code developed to study the interaction of ultrashort pulse lasers with matter [G. M. Petrov and J. Davis, Computer Phys. Comm. 179, 868 (2008); Phys. Plasmas 18, 073102 (2011)] has been parallelized using MPI (Message Passing Interface). The parallelization strategy is optimized for a small number of computer cores, up to about 64. Details on the algorithm implementation are given with emphasis on code optimization by overlapping computations with communications. Performance evaluation for 1D domain decomposition has been made on a small Linux cluster with 64 computer cores for two typical regimes of PIC operation: “particle dominated”, for which the bulk of the computation time is spent on pushing particles, and “field dominated”, for which computing the fields is prevalent. For a small number of computer cores, less than 32, the MPI implementation offers a significant numerical speed-up. In the “particle dominated” regime it is close to the maximum theoretical one, while in the “field dominated” regime it is about 75-80 % of the maximum speed-up. For a number of cores exceeding 32, performance degradation takes place as a result of the adopted 1D domain decomposition. The code parallelization will allow future implementation of atomic physics and extension to three dimensions.

Plasma radiative properties play a pivotal role both in nuclear fusion and astrophysics. They are essential to analyze and explain experiments or observations and also in radiative-hydrodynamics simulations. Their computation requires the generation of large atomic databases and the calculation, by solving a set of rate equations, of a huge number of atomic level populations in wide ranges of plasma conditions. These facts make that, for example, radiative-hydrodynamics in-line simulations be almost infeasible. This has lead to develop analytical expressions based on the parametrization of radiative properties. However, most of them are accurate only for coronal or local thermodynamic equilibrium. In this work we present a code for the parametrization of plasma radiative properties of mono-component plasmas, in terms of plasma density and temperature, such as radiative power loss, the Planck and Rosseland mean opacities and the average ionization, which is valid for steady-state optically thin plasmas in wide ranges of plasma densities and temperatures. Furthermore, we also present some applications of this parametrization such as the analysis of the optical depth and radiative character of plasmas, the use to perform diagnostics of the electron temperature, the determination of mean radiative properties for multicomponent plasmas and the analysis of radiative cooling instabilities in some kind of experiments on high-energy density laboratory astrophysics. Finally, to ease the use of the code for the parametrization, this one has been integrated in a user interface and brief comments about it are presented.

Several recently developed AUSM-family numerical flux functions (SLAU, SLAU2, AUSMM+-up2, and AUSMPW+) have been successfully extended to compute compressible multiphase flows, based on the stratified flow model concept, by following two previous works: one by M.-S. Liou, C.-H. Chang, L. Nguyen, and T.G. Theofanous [AIAA J. 46:2345-2356, 2008], in which AUSM+-up was used entirely, and the other by C.-H. Chang, and M.-S. Liou [J. Comput. Phys. 225:840-873, 2007], in which the exact Riemann solver was combined into AUSM+-up at the phase interface. Through an extensive survey by comparing flux functions, the following are found: (1) AUSM+-up with dissipation parameters of Kp and Ku equal to 0.5 or greater, AUSMPW+, SLAU2, AUSM+-up2, and SLAU can be used to solve benchmark problems, including a shock/water-droplet interaction; (2) SLAU shows oscillatory behaviors [though not as catastrophic as those of AUSM+ (a special case of AUSM+-up with Kp = Ku = 0)] due to insufficient dissipation arising from its ideal-gas-based dissipation term; and (3) when combined with the exact Riemann solver, AUSM+-up (Kp = Ku = 1), SLAU2, and AUSMPW+ are applicable to more challenging problems with high pressure ratios.

In this work the previously developed Lattice Boltzmann-Direct Forcing/ Fictitious Domain (LB-DF/FD) method is adopted to simulate the sedimentation of eight circular particles under gravity at an intermediate Reynolds number of about 248. The particle clustering and the resulting Drafting-Kissing-Tumbling (DKT) motion which takes place for the first time are explored. The effects of initial particle-particle gap on the DKT motion are found significant. In addition, the trajectories of particles are presented under different initial particle-particle gaps, which display totally three kinds of falling patterns provided that no DKT motion takes place, i.e. the concave-down shape, the shape of letter “M” and “in-line” shape. Furthermore, the lateral and vertical hydrodynamic forces on the particles are investigated. It has been found that the value of Strouhal number for all particles is the same which is about 0.157 when initial particle-particle gap is relatively large. The wall effects on falling patterns and particle expansions are examined in the final.

The unsteady flow separation of airfoil with a local flexible structure (LFS) is studied numerically in Lagrangian frames in detail, in order to investigate the nature of its high aerodynamic performance. For such aeroelastic system, the characteristic-based split (CBS) scheme combined with arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) framework is developed firstly for the numerical analysis of unsteady flow, and Galerkin method is used to approach the flexible structure. The local flexible skin of airfoil, which can lead to self-induced oscillations, is considered as unsteady perturbation to the flow. Then, the ensuing high aerodynamic performances and complex unsteady flow separation at low Reynolds number are studied by Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs). The results show that the LFS has a significant influence on the unsteady flow separation, which is the key point for the lift enhancement. Specifically, the oscillations of the LFS can induce the generations of moving separation and vortex, which can enhance the kinetic energy transport from main flow to the boundary layer. The results could give a deep understand of the dynamics in unsteady flow separation and flow control for the flow over airfoil.

In this paper, we investigate the coupling of the Multi-dimensional Optimal Order Detection (MOOD) method and the Arbitrary high order DERivatives (ADER) approach in order to design a new high order accurate, robust and computationally efficient Finite Volume (FV) scheme dedicated to solve nonlinear systems of hyperbolic conservation laws on unstructured triangular and tetrahedral meshes in two and three space dimensions, respectively. The Multi-dimensional Optimal Order Detection (MOOD) method for 2D and 3D geometries has been introduced in a recent series of papers for mixed unstructured meshes. It is an arbitrary high-order accurate Finite Volume scheme in space, using polynomial reconstructions with a posteriori detection and polynomial degree decrementing processes to deal with shock waves and other discontinuities. In the following work, the time discretization is performed with an elegant and efficient one-step ADER procedure. Doing so, we retain the good properties of the MOOD scheme, that is to say the optimal high-order of accuracy is reached on smooth solutions, while spurious oscillations near singularities are prevented. The ADER technique permits not only to reduce the cost of the overall scheme as shown on a set of numerical tests in 2D and 3D, but it also increases the stability of the overall scheme. A systematic comparison between classical unstructured ADER-WENO schemes and the new ADER-MOOD approach has been carried out for high-order schemes in space and time in terms of cost, robustness, accuracy and efficiency. The main finding of this paper is that the combination of ADER with MOOD generally outperforms the one of ADER and WENO either because at given accuracy MOOD is less expensive (memory and/or CPU time), or because it is more accurate for a given grid resolution. A large suite of classical numerical test problems has been solved on unstructured meshes for three challenging multi-dimensional systems of conservation laws: the Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics, the classical equations of ideal magneto-Hydrodynamics (MHD) and finally the relativistic MHD equations (RMHD), which constitutes a particularly challenging nonlinear system of hyperbolic partial differential equation. All tests are run on genuinely unstructured grids composed of simplex elements.

We study the computation of ground states and time dependent solutions of the Schrödinger-Poisson system (SPS) on a bounded domain in 2D (i.e. in two space dimensions). On a disc-shaped domain, we derive exact artificial boundary conditions for the Poisson potential based on truncated Fourier series expansion in θ, and propose a second order finite difference scheme to solve the r-variable ODEs of the Fourier coefficients. The Poisson potential can be solved within (MNlogN) arithmetic operations where M,N are the number of grid points in r-direction and the Fourier bases. Combined with the Poisson solver, a backward Euler and a semi-implicit/leap-frog method are proposed to compute the ground state and dynamics respectively. Numerical results are shown to confirm the accuracy and efficiency. Also we make it clear that backward Euler sine pseudospectral (BESP) method in [33] can not be applied to 2D SPS simulation.

We investigate the critical nuclei morphology in phase transformation by combining two effective ingredients, with the first being the phase field modeling of the relevant energetics which has been a popular approach for phase transitions and the second being shrinking dimer dynamics and its variants for computing saddle points and transition states. In particular, the newly formulated generalized shrinking dimer dynamics is proposed by adopting the Cahn-Hilliard dynamics for the generalized gradient system. As illustrations, a couple of typical cases are considered, including a generic system modeling heterogeneous nucleation and a specific material system modeling the precipitate nucleation in FeCr alloys. While the standard shrinking dimer dynamics can be applied to study the non-conserved case of generic heterogeneous nucleation directly, the generalized shrinking dimer dynamics is efficient to compute precipitate nucleation in FeCr alloys due to the conservation of concentration. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate both the complex morphology associated with nucleation events and the effectiveness of generalized shrinking dimer dynamics based on phase field models.

Various conceptual models exist for numerical simulation of fluid flow in fractured porous media, such as dual-porosity model and equivalent continuum model. As a promising model, the discrete-fracture model has been received more attention in the past decade. It can be used both as a stand-alone tool as well as for the evaluation of effective parameters for the continuum models. Various numerical methods have been applied to the discrete-fracture model, including control volume finite difference, Galerkin and mixed finite element methods. All these methods have inherent limitations in accuracy and applicabilities. In this work, we developed a new numerical scheme for the discrete-fracture model by using mimetic finite difference method. The proposed numerical model is applicable in arbitrary unstructured gridcells with full-tensor permeabilities. The matrix-fracture and fracture-fracture fluxes are calculated based on powerful features of the mimetic finite difference method, while the upstream finite volume scheme is used for the approximation of the saturation equation. Several numerical tests in 2D and 3D are carried out to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed numerical model.

This paper presents limits for stability of projection type schemes when using high order pressure-velocity pairs of same degree. Two high order h/p variational methods encompassing continuous and discontinuous Galerkin formulations are used to explain previously observed lower limits on the time step for projection type schemes to be stable [18], when h- or p-refinement strategies are considered. In addition, the analysis included in this work shows that these stability limits do not depend only on the time step but on the product of the latter and the kinematic viscosity, which is of particular importance in the study of high Reynolds number flows. We show that high order methods prove advantageous in stabilising the simulations when small time steps and low kinematic viscosities are used.

Drawing upon this analysis, we demonstrate how the effects of this instability can be reduced in the discontinuous scheme by introducing a stabilisation term into the global system. Finally, we show that these lower limits are compatible with Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) type restrictions, given that a sufficiently high polynomial order or a mall enough mesh spacing is selected.