Toward interoperable mesh, geometry and field components for PDE simulation development

• Published in: Engineering with computers Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 165 - 182
• Main Authors: Chand, Kyle K., Diachin, Lori Freitag, Li, Xiaolin, Ollivier-Gooch, Carl, Seol, E. Seegyoung, Shephard, Mark S., Tautges, Timothy, Trease, Harold
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer-Verlag 01.06.2008; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: CAE) and Design; Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control; Optimization; Classical Mechanics; Communities; Computer Science; Computer simulation; Computer-Aided Engineering (CAD; Control; Delineation; Discretization; Finite element method; Information flow; Math. Applications in Chemistry; Mathematical and Computational Engineering; Mathematical models; Original Article; Partial differential equations; Simulation; Systems Theory; Geometric Domain; Application Programming Interface; Mesh Entity; Topological Entity; Geometry Interface
• ISSN: 0177-0667; 1435-5663
• DOI: 10.1007/s00366-007-0080-z

Mesh-based PDE simulation codes are becoming increasingly sophisticated and rely on advanced meshing and discretization tools. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to interchange or interoperate tools developed by different communities to experiment with various technologies or to develop new capabilities. To address these difficulties, we have developed component interfaces designed to support the information flow of mesh-based PDE simulations. We describe this information flow and discuss typical roles and services provided by the geometry, mesh, and field components of the simulation. Based on this delineation for the roles of each component, we give a high-level description of the abstract data model and set of interfaces developed by the Department of Energy’s Interoperable Tools for Advanced Petascale Simulation (ITAPS) center. These common interfaces are critical to our interoperability goal, and we give examples of several services based upon these interfaces including mesh adaptation and mesh improvement.