On the Identification of Symmetric Quadrature Rules for Finite Element Methods

In this paper we describe a methodology for the identification of symmetric quadrature rules inside of quadrilaterals, triangles, tetrahedra, prisms, pyramids, and hexahedra. The methodology is free from manual intervention and is capable of identifying an ensemble of rules with a given strength and a given number of points. We also present polyquad which is an implementation of our methodology. Using polyquad we proceed to derive a complete set of symmetric rules on the aforementioned domains. All rules possess purely positive weights and have all points inside the domain. Many of the rules appear to be new, and an improvement over those tabulated in the literature.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

PyFR: An Open Source Framework for Solving Advection-Diffusion Type Problems on Streaming Architectures using the Flux Reconstruction Approach

High-order numerical methods for unstructured grids combine the superior accuracy of high-order spectral or finite difference methods with the geometric flexibility of low-order finite volume or finite element schemes. The Flux Reconstruction (FR) approach unifies various high-order schemes for unstructured grids within a single framework. Additionally, the FR approach exhibits a significant degree of element locality, and is thus able to run efficiently on modern streaming architectures, such as Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). The aforementioned properties of FR mean it offers a promising route to performing affordable, and hence industrially relevant, scale-resolving simulations of hitherto intractable unsteady flows within the vicinity of real-world engineering geometries. In this paper we present PyFR, an open-source Python based framework for solving advection-diffusion type problems on streaming architectures using the FR approach. The framework is designed to solve a range of governing systems on mixed unstructured grids containing various element types. It is also designed to target a range of hardware platforms via use of an in-built domain specific language based on the Mako templating engine. The current release of PyFR is able to solve the compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations on grids of quadrilateral and triangular elements in two dimensions, and hexahedral elements in three dimensions, targeting clusters of CPUs, and NVIDIA GPUs. Results are presented for various benchmark flow problems, single-node performance is discussed, and scalability of the code is demonstrated on up to 104 NVIDIA M2090 GPUs. The software is freely available under a 3-Clause New Style BSD license (see www.pyfr.org)

Heterogeneous Computing on Mixed Unstructured Grids with PyFR

PyFR is an open-source high-order accurate computational fluid dynamics solver for mixed unstructured grids that can target a range of hardware platforms from a single codebase. In this paper we demonstrate the ability of PyFR to perform high-order accurate unsteady simulations of flow on mixed unstructured grids using heterogeneous multi-node hardware. Specifically, after benchmarking single-node performance for various platforms, PyFR v0.2.2 is used to undertake simulations of unsteady flow over a circular cylinder at Reynolds number 3 900 using a mixed unstructured grid of prismatic and tetrahedral elements on a desktop workstation containing an Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 CPU, an NVIDIA Tesla K40c GPU, and an AMD FirePro W9100 GPU. Both the performance and accuracy of PyFR are assessed. PyFR v0.2.2 is freely available under a 3-Clause New Style BSD license (see www.pyfr.org).Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 6 table

Positivity-preserving entropy filtering for the ideal magnetohydrodynamics equations

In this work, we present a positivity-preserving adaptive filtering approach for discontinuous spectral element approximations of the ideal magnetohydrodynamics equations. This approach combines the entropy filtering method (Dzanic and Witherden, J. Comput. Phys., 468, 2022) for shock capturing in gas dynamics along with the eight-wave method for enforcing a divergence-free magnetic field. Due to the inclusion of non-conservative source terms, an operator-splitting approach is introduced to ensure that the positivity and entropy constraints remain satisfied by the discrete solution. Furthermore, a computationally efficient algorithm for solving the optimization process for this nonlinear filtering approach is presented. The resulting scheme can robustly resolve strong discontinuities on general unstructured grids without tunable parameters while recovering high-order accuracy for smooth solutions. The efficacy of the scheme is shown in numerical experiments on various problems including extremely magnetized blast waves and three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic instabilities.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figure

On the anti-aliasing properties of entropy filtering for discontinuous spectral element approximations of under-resolved turbulent flows

For large Reynolds number flows, it is typically necessary to perform simulations that are under-resolved with respect to the underlying flow physics. For nodal discontinuous spectral element approximations of these under-resolved flows, the collocation projection of the nonlinear flux can introduce aliasing errors which can result in numerical instabilities. In Dzanic and Witherden (J. Comput. Phys., 468, 2022), an entropy-based adaptive filtering approach was introduced as a robust, parameter-free shock-capturing method for discontinuous spectral element methods. This work explores the ability of entropy filtering for mitigating aliasing-driven instabilities in the simulation of under-resolved turbulent flows through high-order implicit large eddy simulations of a NACA0021 airfoil in deep stall at a Reynolds number of 270,000. It was observed that entropy filtering can adequately mitigate aliasing-driven instabilities without degrading the accuracy of the underlying high-order scheme on par with standard anti-aliasing methods such as over-integration, albeit with marginally worse performance at higher approximation orders.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

A positivity-preserving and conservative high-order flux reconstruction method for the polyatomic Boltzmann--BGK equation

In this work, we present a positivity-preserving high-order flux reconstruction method for the polyatomic Boltzmann--BGK equation augmented with a discrete velocity model that ensures the scheme is discretely conservative. Through modeling the internal degrees of freedom, the approach is further extended to polyatomic molecules and can encompass arbitrary constitutive laws. The approach is validated on a series of large-scale complex numerical experiments, ranging from shock-dominated flows computed on unstructured grids to direct numerical simulation of three-dimensional compressible turbulent flows, the latter of which is the first instance of such a flow computed by directly solving the Boltzmann equation. The results show the ability of the scheme to directly resolve shock structures without any ad hoc numerical shock capturing method and correctly approximate turbulent flow phenomena in a consistent manner with the hydrodynamic equations.Comment: 31 pages, 20 figure