The “how to” document guides the user through complicated aspects of software usage. It should supplement both the User’s manual and the Theory document, by providing examples and detailed discussion that reduce learning time for complex set ups. These documents are intended to be used together. We will not formally list all parameters for an input here – see the User’s manual for this. All the examples in the “How To” document are part of the Sierra/SD test suite, and each will run with no modification. The nature of this document casts together a number of rather unrelated procedures. Grouping them is difficult. Please try to use the table of contents and the index as a guide in finding the analyses of interest.
In this study, we present spectral equivalence results for higher-order tensor product edge-, face- and interior-based finite elements. Specifically, we show for certain choices of shape functions that the mass and stiffness matrices of the higher-order elements are spectrally equivalent to those for an assembly of lowest-order elements on the associated Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre mesh. Based on this equivalence, efficient preconditioners can be designed with favorable computational complexity. Numerical results are presented which confirm the theory and demonstrate the benefits of the equivalence results for overlapping Schwarz preconditioners.
In this study, we present spectral equivalence results for high-order tensor product edge- and face-based finite elements for the H(curl) and H(div) function spaces. Specifically, we show for certain choices of shape functions that the mass and stiffness matrices of the high-order elements are spectrally equivalent to those for an assembly of low-order elements on the associated Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre mesh. Based on this equivalence, efficient preconditioners can be designed with favorable computational complexity. Numerical results are presented which confirm the theory and demonstrate the benefits of the equivalence results for overlapping Schwarz preconditioners.
Sierra/SD provides a massively parallel implementation of structural dynamics finite element analysis, required for high-fidelity, validated models used in modal, vibration, static and shock analysis of weapons systems. This document provides a user's guide to the input for Sierra/SD . Details of input specifications for the different solution types, output options, element types and parameters are included. The appendices contain detailed examples, and instructions for running the software on parallel platforms.
The “how to” document is designed to help walk the analyst through difficult aspects of software usage. It should supplement both the User’s manual and the Theory document, by providing examples and detailed discussion that reduce learning time for complex set ups. These documents are intended to be used together. We will not formally list all parameters for an input here – see the User’s manual for this. All the examples in the “How To” document are part of the Sierra/SD test suite, and each will run with no modification. The nature of this document casts together a number of rather unrelated procedures. Grouping them is difficult. Please try to use the table of contents and the index as a guide in finding the analyses of interest.
This document presents tests from the Sierra Structural Mechanics verification test suite. Each of these tests is run nightly with the Sierra/SD code suite and the results of the test checked versus the correct analytic result. For each of the tests presented in this document the test setup, derivation of the analytic solution, and comparison of the Sierra/SD code results to the analytic solution is provided. This document can be used to confirm that a given code capability is verified or referenced as a compilation of example problems.
Sierra/SD provides a massively parallel implementation of structural dynamics finite element analysis, required for high fidelity, validated models used in modal, vibration, static and shock analysis of structural systems. This manual describes the theory behind many of the constructs in Sierra/SD. For a more detailed description of how to use Sierra/SD, we refer the reader to Sierra/SD, User's Notes. Many of the constructs in Sierra/SD are pulled directly from published material. Where possible, these materials are referenced herein. However, certain functions in Sierra/SD are specific to our implementation. We try to be far more complete in those areas. The theory manual was developed from several sources including general notes, a programmer notes manual, the user's notes and of course the material in the open literature.
In this study, we present Balancing Domain Decomposition by Constraints (BDDC) preconditioners for three-dimensional scalar elliptic and linear elasticity problems in which the direct solution of the coarse problem is replaced by a preconditioner based on a smaller vertex-based coarse space.
This work explores how High Perforrnance Computing is enabling acoustic solutions across a wide-range ofscience and engineering applications that were historically intractable.
Sprague, Michael S.; Ananthan, Shreyas A.; Gruchalla, Kenny G.; lawson, michael j.; Rood, Jon R.; Swirydowicz, K.S.; Thomas, Steve T.; Vijayakumar, Ganesh V.; Crozier, Paul C.; Dohrmann, Clark R.; Hu, Jonathan J.; Williams, Alan B.; Turner, John A.; Prokopenko, A.P.; Moser, Robert M.; Melvin, J.M.
The goal of the ExaWind project is to enable predictive simulations of wind farms composed of many MW-scale turbines situated in complex terrain. Predictive simulations will require computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for which the mesh resolves the geometry of the turbines, and captures the rotation and large deflections of blades. Whereas such simulations for a single turbine are arguably petascale class, multi-turbine wind farm simulations will require exascale-class resources. The primary code in the ExaWind project is Nalu, which is an unstructured-grid solver for the acoustically-incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and mass continuity is maintained through pressure projection. The model consists of the mass-continuity Poisson-type equation for pressure and a momentum equation for the velocity. For such modeling approaches, simulation times are dominated by linear-system setup and solution for the continuity and momentum systems. For the ExaWind challenge problem, the moving meshes greatly affect overall solver costs as re-initialization of matrices and re-computation of preconditioners is required at every time step We describe in this report our efforts to decrease the setup and solution time for the mass-continuity Poisson system with respect to the benchmark timing results reported in FY18 Q1. In particular, we investigate improving and evaluating two types of algebraic multigrid (AMG) preconditioners: Classical Ruge-Stfiben AMG (C-AMG) and smoothed-aggregation AMG (SA-AMG), which are implemented in the Hypre and Trilinos/MueLu software stacks, respectively. Preconditioner performance was optimized through existing capabilities and settings.
The goal of the ExaWind project is to enable predictive simulations of wind farms composed of many MW-scale turbines situated in complex terrain. Predictive simulations will require computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for which the mesh resolves the geometry of the turbines, and captures the rotation and large deflections of blades. Whereas such simulations for a single turbine are arguably petascale class, multi-turbine wind farm simulations will require exascale-class resources.
Exterior acoustic problems occur in a wide range of applications, making the finite element analysis of such problems a common practice in the engineering community. Various methods for truncating infinite exterior domains have been developed, including absorbing boundary conditions, infinite elements, and more recently, perfectly matched layers (PML). PML are gaining popularity due to their generality, ease of implementation, and effectiveness as an absorbing boundary condition. PML formulations have been developed in Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical geometries, but not ellipsoidal. In addition, the parallel solution of PML formulations with iterative solvers for the solution of the Helmholtz equation, and how this compares with more traditional strategies such as infinite elements, has not been adequately investigated. In this paper, we present a parallel, ellipsoidal PML formulation for acoustic Helmholtz problems. To faciliate the meshing process, the ellipsoidal PML layer is generated with an on-the-fly mesh extrusion. Though the complex stretching is defined along ellipsoidal contours, we modify the Jacobian to include an additional mapping back to Cartesian coordinates in the weak formulation of the finite element equations. This allows the equations to be solved in Cartesian coordinates, which is more compatible with existing finite element software, but without the necessity of dealing with corners in the PML formulation. Herein we also compare the conditioning and performance of the PML Helmholtz problem with infinite element approach that is based on high order basis functions. On a set of representative exterior acoustic examples, we show that high order infinite element basis functions lead to an increasing number of Helmholtz solver iterations, whereas for PML the number of iterations remains constant for the same level of accuracy. This provides an additional advantage of PML over the infinite element approach.
A BDDC domain decomposition preconditioner is defined by a coarse component, expressed in terms of primal constraints, a weighted average across the interface between the subdomains, and local components given in terms of solvers of local subdomain problems. BDDC methods for vector field problems discretized with Raviart-Thomas finite elements are introduced. The methods are based on a deluxe type of weighted average and an adaptive selection of primal constraints developed to deal with coefficients with high contrast even inside individual subdomains. For problems with very many subdomains, a third level of the preconditioner is introduced. Under the assumption that the subdomains are all built from elements of a coarse triangulation of the given domain, that the meshes of each subdomain are quasi uniform and that the material parameters are constant in each subdomain, a bound is obtained for the condition number of the preconditioned linear system which is independent of the values and the jumps of these parameters across the interface between the subdomains as well as the number of subdomains. Numerical experiments, using the PETSc library, are also presented which support the theory and show the effectiveness of the algorithms even for problems not covered by the theory. Included are also experiments with Brezzi-Douglas-Marini finite element approximations.