Spheral-SD.ppt.pptVIP

Spheral++ An Open Source Project to Simulate Hydrodynamics in Astrophysical Systems. What is Spheral++? This project is developing an open source code for two purposes: To model the important physical processes required to study the formation and evolution of galaxies in a cosmological scenario (initially gravitation, hydrodynamics, and simple radiative processes). To provide a useful framework for developing novel new “particle” based hydrodynamic techniques. Why Open Source? Typically scientific software is custom built, and not shared! This leads to disposable software, which is used some number of times by the author(s), and then discarded. For complex numerical simulation codes, this approach leads to massive duplication of effort. Some redundant effort is useful for comparison. “If I gave away my [numerical modeling] code, then someone would just abuse it.” Why Open Source? There are many potential benefits to a shared resource for hydrodynamic modeling: These are complex, expensive programs, so we can reduce wasted effort by sharing. Peer review becomes possible. Once such a tool is well characterized, everyone can understand the results (and their shortcomings) that much more clearly. If properly designed, such a tool can easily be extended by other researchers. Not everyone wants to write their own! Requirements In order to produce scientifically useful results, we minimally require: Model gravitation: N-body particle techniques are well characterized. Model hydrodynamics: Particle based hydro’s (such as smoothed particle hydrodynamics -- SPH) robustly model adiabatic and shock physics in a lagrangian manner, allowing the resolution scales to follow the mass. Adequate resolution: 2563 or greater numbers of particles, must be massively parallel! Software Requirements Don’t assume what the user wants to do! Provide a flexible set of tools that can be used to build and analyze simulations. It must be possible to implement new algorithms and ideas in the fra