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ASC ATDM Level 2 Milestone #6358: Assess Status of Next Generation Components and Physics Models in EMPIRE

Bettencourt, Matthew T.; Kramer, Richard M.; Cartwright, Keith C.; Phillips, Edward G.; Ober, Curtis C.; Pawlowski, Roger P.; Swan, Matthew S.; Kalashnikova, Irina; Phipps, Eric T.; Conde, Sidafa C.; Cyr, Eric C.; Ulmer, Craig D.; Kordenbrock, Todd H.; Levy, Scott L.; Templet, Gary J.; Hu, Jonathan J.; Lin, Paul L.; Glusa, Christian A.; Siefert, Christopher S.; Glass, Micheal W.

This report documents the outcome from the ASC ATDM Level 2 Milestone 6358: Assess Status of Next Generation Components and Physics Models in EMPIRE. This Milestone is an assessment of the EMPIRE (ElectroMagnetic Plasma In Realistic Environments) application and three software components. The assessment focuses on the electromagnetic and electrostatic particle-in-cell solu- tions for EMPIRE and its associated solver, time integration, and checkpoint-restart components. This information provides a clear understanding of the current status of the EMPIRE application and will help to guide future work in FY19 in order to ready the application for the ASC ATDM L 1 Milestone in FY20. It is clear from this assessment that performance of the linear solver will have to be a focus in FY19.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2018
OSTIDOI

Formulation and computation of dynamic, interface-compatible Whitney complexes in three dimensions

Journal of Computational Physics

Kramer, Richard M.; Siefert, Christopher S.; Voth, Thomas E.; Bochev, Pavel B.

A discrete De Rham complex enables compatible, structure-preserving discretizations for a broad range of partial differential equations problems. Such discretizations can correctly reproduce the physics of interface problems, provided the grid conforms to the interface. However, large deformations, complex geometries, and evolving interfaces makes generation of such grids difficult. We develop and demonstrate two formally equivalent approaches that, for a given background mesh, dynamically construct an interface-conforming discrete De Rham complex. Both approaches start by dividing cut elements into interface-conforming subelements but differ in how they build the finite element basis on these subelements. The first approach discards the existing non-conforming basis of the parent element and replaces it by a dynamic set of degrees of freedom of the same kind. The second approach defines the interface-conforming degrees of freedom on the subelements as superpositions of the basis functions of the parent element. These approaches generalize the Conformal Decomposition Finite Element Method (CDFEM) and the extended finite element method with algebraic constraints (XFEM-AC), respectively, across the De Rham complex.

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TYPE Journal Article YEAR 2018
ScopusOSTIDOI

The Crank Nicolson Time Integrator for EMPHASIS

McGregor, Duncan A.; Love, Edward L.; Kramer, Richard M.

We investigate the use of implicit time integrators for finite element time domain approximations of Maxwell's equations in vacuum. We discretize Maxwell's equations in time using Crank-Nicolson and in 3D space using compatible finite elements. We solve the system by taking a single step of Newton's method and inverting the Eddy-Current Schur complement allowing for the use of standard preconditioning techniques. This approach also generalizes to more complex material models that can include the Unsplit PML. We present verification results and demonstrate performance at CFL numbers up to 1000.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2018
OSTIDOI

EMPHASIS™/Nevada UTDEM User Guide Version 2.1.2

Turner, C.D.; Pasik, Michael F.; Seidel, David B.; Pointon, Timothy D.; Cartwright, Keith C.; Kramer, Richard M.; McGregor, Duncan A.

The Unstructured Time-Domain ElectroMagnetics (UTDEM) portion of the EMPHASIS suite solves Maxwell’s equations using finite-element techniques on unstructured meshes. This document provides user-specific information to facilitate the use of the code for applications of interest.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2017
OSTIDOI

Guaranteed Quality Conformal Mesh Decomposition

Kramer, Richard M.; Noble, David R.

Interface-conforming elements generated by the conformal decomposition finite element method can have arbitrarily poor quality due to the arbitrary intersection of the base triangular or tetrahedral mesh with material interfaces. This can have severe consequences for both the solvability of linear systems and for the interpolation error of fields represented on these meshes. The present work demonstrates that snapping the base mesh nodes to the interface whenever the interface cuts close to a node results in conforming meshes of good quality. Theoretical limits on the snapping tolerance are derived, and even conservative tolerance choices result in limiting the stiffness matrix condition number to within a small multiple of that of the base mesh. Interpolation errors are also well controlled in the norms of interest. In 3D, use of node-to-interface snapping also permits a simpler and more robust vertex ID-based element decomposition algorithm to be used with no serious detriment to mesh quality.

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TYPE Journal Article YEAR 2015
OSTI

Cutting Tetrahedra by Node Identifiers

Kramer, Richard M.

This report briefly outlines an algorithm for dividing a tetrahedron intersected by a planar interface into conforming sub-tetrahedra. The problem of conformal decomposition of tetrahedral meshes arises in enriched finite element methods; in particular, we are concerned with the Conformal Decomposition Finite Element Method (CDFEM) and variants of the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM). The algorithm presented is based on the paper How to Subdivide Pyramids, Prisms and Hexahedra into Tetrahedra by Dompierre, Labbe, Vallet, and Camarero (1999), and here is applied and extended to the problem of fully defining and tracking all geometric features of the sub-tetrahedra generated when a tetrahedron is cut by a planar surface.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2015
OSTIDOI

Electromagnetic Extended Finite Elements for High-Fidelity Multimaterial Problems LDRD Final Report

Siefert, Christopher S.; Bochev, Pavel B.; Kramer, Richard M.; Voth, Thomas E.; Cox, James C.

Surface effects are critical to the accurate simulation of electromagnetics (EM) as current tends to concentrate near material surfaces. Sandia EM applications, which include exploding bridge wires for detonator design, electromagnetic launch of flyer plates for material testing and gun design, lightning blast-through for weapon safety, electromagnetic armor, and magnetic flux compression generators, all require accurate resolution of surface effects. These applications operate in a large deformation regime, where body-fitted meshes are impractical and multimaterial elements are the only feasible option. State-of-the-art methods use various mixture models to approximate the multi-physics of these elements. The empirical nature of these models can significantly compromise the accuracy of the simulation in this very important surface region. We propose to substantially improve the predictive capability of electromagnetic simulations by removing the need for empirical mixture models at material surfaces. We do this by developing an eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) and an associated Conformal Decomposition Finite Element Method (CDFEM) which satisfy the physically required compatibility conditions at material interfaces. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods for diffusion and diffusion-like problems on node, edge and face elements in 2D and 3D. We also present preliminary work on h -hierarchical elements and remap algorithms.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2014
OSTIDOI
43 Results
43 Results