PySDM v1: particle-based cloud modelling package for warm-rain microphysics and aqueous chemistry

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Bartman, Piotr, Bulenok, Oleksii, Górski, Kamil, Jaruga, Anna, Łazarski, Grzegorz, Olesik, Michael, Piasecki, Bartosz, Singer, Clare E, Talar, Aleksandra, Arabas, Sylwester
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 22.10.2021
• Subjects: Algorithms; Atmospheric models; Chemical composition; Computational fluid dynamics; Computer Science - Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science; Fluid flow; Microphysics; Monte Carlo simulation; Physics - Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics; Representations; Two dimensional flow; Two dimensional models
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2103.17238

PySDM is an open-source Python package for simulating the dynamics of particles undergoing condensational and collisional growth, interacting with a fluid flow and subject to chemical composition changes. It is intended to serve as a building block for process-level as well as computational-fluid-dynamics simulation systems involving representation of a continuous phase (air) and a dispersed phase (aerosol), with PySDM being responsible for representation of the dispersed phase. The PySDM package core is a Pythonic high-performance implementation of the Super-Droplet Method (SDM) Monte-Carlo algorithm for representing collisional growth, hence the name. PySDM has two alternative parallel number-crunching backends available: multi-threaded CPU backend based on Numba and GPU-resident backend built on top of ThrustRTC. The usage examples are built on top of four simple atmospheric cloud modelling frameworks: box, adiabatic parcel, single-column and 2D prescribed flow kinematic models. In addition, the package ships with tutorial code depicting how PySDM can be used from Julia and Matlab.