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At least 19 records

Impacts of Hybrid Parallelism and Vectorization on the Performance of Newton-Krylov Methods in Computational Aerodynamics

Finding the numerical solution of moderate and high-fidelity aerodynamics problems on modern computer architectures involves, 1) decomposing the domain into smaller regions of nearly equal size, and 2) allocating computational resources for calculations on each domain and communication between domains. Modern computer clusters are composed from hierarchies of processing, memory, and communication resources with varying capabilities and latencies.This paper focuses on the combination of domain decomposition provided by ParMETIS [1]and Newton-Krylov Methods [2–5] for the solution of Computational Aerodynamics problems of interest to NASA. Herein, trade-offs encountered when mapping aerodynamics problems to modern computer architectures are explored through examples and discussions of trade-offs in parallelism from MPI [6], Open MP [7], and vectorization as partition sizes and computational resources are varied. An example of the impact that domain decomposition and MPI+OpenMPresource allocation can have on an adjoint calculation is presented in this abstract. The full paper will include more detailed examples, discussions of difficulties and potential methods to overcome them, and topics identified for future study.

Computational Aerodynamics, Hybrid Parallelism, Ve↗

A scalable multidimensional fully implicit solver for Hall magnetohydrodynamics

We propose an optimally performant fully implicit algorithm for the Hall magnetohydrodynamics (HMHD) equations based on multigrid-preconditioned Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov methods. HMHD is a challenging system to solve numerically because it supports stiff fast dispersive waves. The preconditioner is formulated using an operator-split approximate block factorization (Schur complement), informed by physics insight. We use a vector-potential formulation (instead of a magnetic field one) to allow a clean segregation of the problematic $\nabla$ x $\nabla$ x operator in the electron Ohm's law subsystem. This segregation allows the formulation of an effective damped block-Jacobi smoother for multigrid. We demonstrate by analysis that our proposed block-Jacobi iteration is convergent and has the smoothing property. The resulting HMHD solver is verified linearly with wave propagation examples, and nonlinearly with the GEM challenge reconnection problem by comparison against another HMHD code. We demonstrate the excellent algorithmic and parallel performance of the algorithm up to 16384 MPI tasks in two dimensions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Development of Segregated Thermal-Hydraulics Solvers in MOOSE

The simulation of fluid flows is an essential part of the design and analysis of nuclear systems. Algorithms able to simulate flows at different fidelity levels are available in the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) and MOOSE-based applications such as Pronghorn \cite{novak2018pronghorn}, Pronghorn-Subchannel, RELAP-7, and SAM. Currently, significant effort is being invested in the development of coarse-mesh Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) capabilities within MOOSE and Pronghorn for the simulation of Generation IV nuclear reactors. Traditionally, the solution algorithms in MOOSE have relied on Newton or quasi-Newton methods (such as the preconditioned Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov method) where residuals and Jacobians (or approximations thereof) are constructed. Both Newton and quasi-Newton methods require the solution of a linear system at each nonlinear Newton iteration with the Jacobian as the system matrix. The Jacobian contains blocks originating from all variables in the problem (i.e., for thermal-hydraulics at least pressure, velocities, and temperature). Due to the formulation of the problem in a general multiphysics setting on unstructured mesh, creating a good preconditioner for the linear system can be challenging, thus many fluid applications have utilized direct solver-based methods such as LU factorization. However, with increasing system size and complexity in multi-dimensional problems, the direct solution of linear systems becomes computationally expensive both in execution time and and memory. For this reason, recent effort has focused on adapting segregated solution algorithms for CFD problems in MOOSE. These algorithms use fixed-point iteration between segregated systems whose assembly and preconditioning are easier those of the monolithic system. Initial results show that the segregated solution algorithm outperforms the monolithic approach in terms of memory usage and for large 3D problems in terms of CPU time as well.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Development of Segregated Thermal-Hydraulics Solvers in MOOSE

The simulation of fluid flows is an essential part of the design and analysis of nuclear systems. Algorithms able to simulate flows at different fidelity levels are available in the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) and MOOSE-based applications such as Pronghorn \cite{novak2018pronghorn}, Pronghorn-Subchannel, RELAP-7, and SAM. Currently, significant effort is being invested in the development of coarse-mesh Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) capabilities within MOOSE and Pronghorn for the simulation of Generation IV nuclear reactors. Traditionally, the solution algorithms in MOOSE have relied on Newton or quasi-Newton methods (such as the preconditioned Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov method) where residuals and Jacobians (or approximations thereof) are constructed. Both Newton and quasi-Newton methods require the solution of a linear system at each nonlinear Newton iteration with the Jacobian as the system matrix. The Jacobian contains blocks originating from all variables in the problem (i.e., for thermal-hydraulics at least pressure, velocities, and temperature). Due to the formulation of the problem in a general multiphysics setting on unstructured mesh, creating a good preconditioner for the linear system can be challenging, thus many fluid applications have utilized direct solver-based methods such as LU factorization. However, with increasing system size and complexity in multi-dimensional problems, the direct solution of linear systems becomes computationally expensive both in execution time and and memory. For this reason, recent effort has focused on adapting segregated solution algorithms for CFD problems in MOOSE. These algorithms use fixed-point iteration between segregated systems whose assembly and preconditioning are easier those of the monolithic system. Initial results show that the segregated solution algorithm outperforms the monolithic approach in terms of memory usage and for large 3D problems in terms of CPU time as well.

42 ENGINEERING↗

SIERRA Multimechanics Module: Aria User Manual (V.5.10)

Aria is a Galerkin finite element based program for solving coupled-physics problems described by systems of PDEs and is capable of solving nonlinear, implicit, transient and direct-to-steady state problems in two and three dimensions on parallel architectures. The suite of physics currently supported by Aria includes thermal energy transport, species transport, and electrostatics as well as generalized scalar, vector and tensor transport equations. Additionally, Aria includes support for manufacturing process flows via the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations specialized to a low Reynolds number ($Re$ < 1) regime. Enhanced modeling support of manufacturing processing is made possible through use of either arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) and level set based free and moving boundary tracking in conjunction with quasi-static nonlinear elastic solid mechanics for mesh control. Coupled physics problems are solved in several ways including fully-coupled Newton’s method with analytic or numerical sensitivities, fully-coupled Newton-Krylov methods and a loosely-coupled nonlinear iteration about subsets of the system that are solved using combinations of the aforementioned methods. Error estimation, uniform and dynamic $h$-adaptivity and dynamic load balancing are some of Aria’s more advanced capabilities.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

SIERRA Multimechanics Module: Aria Thermal Theory Manual (V.5.10)

Aria is a Galerkin finite element based program for solving coupled-physics problems described by systems of PDEs and is capable of solving nonlinear, implicit, transient and direct-to-steady state problems in two and three dimensions on parallel architectures. The suite of physics currently supported by Aria includes thermal energy transport, species transport, and electrostatics as well as generalized scalar, vector and tensor transport equations. Additionally, Aria includes support for manufacturing process flows via the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations specialized to a low Reynolds number ($Re$ < 1) regime. Enhanced modeling support of manufacturing processing is made possible through use of either arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) and level set based free and moving boundary tracking in conjunction with quasi-static nonlinear elastic solid mechanics for mesh control. Coupled physics problems are solved in several ways including fully-coupled Newton’s method with analytic or numerical sensitivities, fully-coupled Newton-Krylov methods and a loosely-coupled nonlinear iteration about subsets of the system that are solved using combinations of the aforementioned methods. Error estimation, uniform and dynamic $h$-adaptivity and dynamic load balancing are some of Aria’s more advanced capabilities.

42 ENGINEERING↗

An implicit particle code with exact energy and charge conservation for electromagnetic studies of dense plasmas

A collisional particle code based on implicit energy- and charge-conserving methods is presented. A modified version of the particle-suppressed Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov method that can enhance the solver efficiency is introduced. Mathematically, it is shown that this new approach can be viewed as a fixed-point iteration method for the particle positions. The model can exactly conserve global energy and local charge and can efficiently use time steps larger than the plasma period. In conclusion, the algorithm's ability to simulate dense plasmas accurately and efficiently is quantified by simulating the dynamic compression of a plasma slab via a magnetic piston in 1D planar geometry.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Tensor-Product Preconditioners for Higher-Order Space-Time Discontinuous Galerkin Methods

space-time discontinuous-Galerkin spectral-element discretization is presented for direct numerical simulation of the compressible Navier-Stokes equat ions. An efficient solution technique based on a matrix-free Newton-Krylov method is developed in order to overcome the stiffness associated with high solution order. The use of tensor-product basis functions is key to maintaining efficiency at high order. Efficient preconditioning methods are presented which can take advantage of the tensor-product formulation. A diagonalized Alternating-Direction-Implicit (ADI) scheme is extended to the space-time discontinuous Galerkin discretization. A new preconditioner for the compressible Euler/Navier-Stokes equations based on the fast-diagonalization method is also presented. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of these preconditioners for the direct numerical simulation of subsonic turbulent flows.

Diosady, Laslo T.↗

Design of a Variational Multiscale Method for Turbulent Compressible Flows

A spectral-element framework is presented for the simulation of subsonic compressible high-Reynolds-number flows. The focus of the work is maximizing the efficiency of the computational schemes to enable unsteady simulations with a large number of spatial and temporal degrees of freedom. A collocation scheme is combined with optimized computational kernels to provide a residual evaluation with computational cost independent of order of accuracy up to 16th order. The optimized residual routines are used to develop a low-memory implicit scheme based on a matrix-free Newton-Krylov method. A preconditioner based on the finite-difference diagonalized ADI scheme is developed which maintains the low memory of the matrix-free implicit solver, while providing improved convergence properties. Emphasis on low memory usage throughout the solver development is leveraged to implement a coupled space-time DG solver which may offer further efficiency gains through adaptivity in both space and time.

Design↗

Newton-Krylov-Schwarz: An implicit solver for CFD

Newton-Krylov methods and Krylov-Schwarz (domain decomposition) methods have begun to become established in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) over the past decade. The former employ a Krylov method inside of Newton's method in a Jacobian-free manner, through directional differencing. The latter employ an overlapping Schwarz domain decomposition to derive a preconditioner for the Krylov accelerator that relies primarily on local information, for data-parallel concurrency. They may be composed as Newton-Krylov-Schwarz (NKS) methods, which seem particularly well suited for solving nonlinear elliptic systems in high-latency, distributed-memory environments. We give a brief description of this family of algorithms, with an emphasis on domain decomposition iterative aspects. We then describe numerical simulations with Newton-Krylov-Schwarz methods on aerodynamics applications emphasizing comparisons with a standard defect-correction approach, subdomain preconditioner consistency, subdomain preconditioner quality, and the effect of a coarse grid.

Cai, Xiao-Chuan↗

Parallel Implicit Algorithms for CFD

The main goal of this project was efficient distributed parallel and workstation cluster implementations of Newton-Krylov-Schwarz (NKS) solvers for implicit Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD.) "Newton" refers to a quadratically convergent nonlinear iteration using gradient information based on the true residual, "Krylov" to an inner linear iteration that accesses the Jacobian matrix only through highly parallelizable sparse matrix-vector products, and "Schwarz" to a domain decomposition form of preconditioning the inner Krylov iterations with primarily neighbor-only exchange of data between the processors. Prior experience has established that Newton-Krylov methods are competitive solvers in the CFD context and that Krylov-Schwarz methods port well to distributed memory computers. The combination of the techniques into Newton-Krylov-Schwarz was implemented on 2D and 3D unstructured Euler codes on the parallel testbeds that used to be at LaRC and on several other parallel computers operated by other agencies or made available by the vendors. Early implementations were made directly in Massively Parallel Integration (MPI) with parallel solvers we adapted from legacy NASA codes and enhanced for full NKS functionality. Later implementations were made in the framework of the PETSC library from Argonne National Laboratory, which now includes pseudo-transient continuation Newton-Krylov-Schwarz solver capability (as a result of demands we made upon PETSC during our early porting experiences). A secondary project pursued with funding from this contract was parallel implicit solvers in acoustics, specifically in the Helmholtz formulation. A 2D acoustic inverse problem has been solved in parallel within the PETSC framework.

Keyes, David E.↗

Streamlined Convergence Acceleration for CFD Codes

Enigma, a simplified interface to the PETSc library, is shown to enable the rapid solution of discrete partial differential equations. Two CFD codes, LAURA and HyperSolve, use Enigma to compute steady solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. Using PETSc, Enigma is shown to provide a Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov method (JFNK), globalized with pseudotransient continuation, that improves efficiency over the point-implicit relaxation method traditionally used by LAURA. It is shown that iterative error has a large impact on surface heat transfer predicted by LAURA on an axisymmetric sphere-cone geometry. Also, the convergence rate of HyperSolve simulating subsonic flow over a delta wing geometry with the JFNK method is shown to be more efficient than employing a defect correction method as the nonlinear solver.

Thompson, Kyle B.↗

Schwarz-Based Algorithms for Compressible Flows

We investigate in this paper the application of Schwarz-based algorithms to compressible flows. First we study the combination of these methods with defect-correction procedures. We then study the effect on the Schwarz-based methods of replacing the explicit treatment of the boundary conditions by an implicit one. In the last part of this paper we study the combination of these methods with Newton-Krylov matrix-free methods. Numerical experiments that show the performance of our approaches are then presented.

Tidriri, M. D.↗

Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov method for the simulation of non-thermal plasma discharges with high-order time integration and physics-based preconditioning

A preconditioning framework for the numerical simulation of non-thermal streamer discharges is developed using the Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov (JFNK) method. A reduced plasma fluid model is considered, consisting of electrons, one positive ion, one negative ion, and the electrostatic potential. Here, the plasma kinetics model includes ionization, electron-ion recombination, electron attachment, electron detachment, and ion-ion recombination. The governing equations are made dimensionless, discretized in space with finite differences, and integrated in time with a fully implicit method based on high-order backward differentiation formulas. The preconditioning framework is based on a linearized form of the governing equations and physics-based operator splitting. The efficiency of the preconditioning strategy is assessed through two test cases: streamer propagation between parallel plates and an axisymmetric pin-to-pin discharge. The fully implicit approach overcomes traditional restrictions in the time step size due to processes such as electron drift, electron diffusion, and dielectric relaxation. Excellent performance is observed through relevant statistics of the JFNK solver, although the number of linear iterations increases for the pin-to-pin discharge when nonlinear numerical boundary conditions are imposed at the electrodes. Performance studies show scalability with O(100-1000) processors for O(10M) unknowns with ample room for optimization.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Semi-implicit continuum kinetic modeling of weakly collisional parallel transport in a magnetic mirror

We present implicit-explicit (IMEX) kinetic simulations of weakly collisional parallel plasma transport in magnetic mirror configurations using the continuum code COGENT. The numerical scheme employs a Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov method with algebraic multigrid preconditioning to overcome the severe time step limitations imposed by strong mirror forces in fully explicit schemes. Applied to parameters relevant to the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror experiment, the IMEX approach enables time steps up to 2.5×10 4 times larger than those permitted by explicit methods, resulting in a 2500× speedup in 1D–2V simulations of parallel transport with kinetic ions and Boltzmann electrons. Additionally, a reduced bounce-averaged model for a square mirror is implemented to support the computationally intensive fully kinetic simulations. The bounce-averaged formulation is used to evaluate the numerical convergence of the velocity-space discretization algorithms and to assess the role of the collision model by comparing simulations employing the nonlinear Fokker–Planck and the simplified Lenard–Bernstein–Dougherty collision operators.

Collision theories↗

Krylov methods for compressible flows

We investigate the application of Krylov methods to compressible flows, and the effect of implicit boundary conditions on the implicit solution of nonlinear problems. Two defect-correction procedures, namely, approximate factorization (AF) for structured grids and ILU/GMRES for general grids, are considered. Also considered here are Newton-Krylov matrix-free methods that we combined with the use of mixed discretization schemes in the implicitly defined Jacobian and its preconditioner. Numerical experiments that show the performance of our approaches are then presented.

Tidriri, M. D.↗

Efficient Preconditioning of a High-Order Solver for Multiple Physics

This work addresses preconditioning approaches for an implicit high-order solver frame-work applied to multiple physics. The solver is based on a space-time spectral element method and matrix-free Newton-Krylov solver developed at NASA over the recent years. Within this context, most preconditioning methods are impractical, as the computational time and memory requirements scale poorly with increasing polynomial orders. To improve computational efficiency, we first describe a novel entity-based Block Jacobi preconditioner for the continuous-Galerkin solution of the linear-elasticity and linear-shell equations. Second, we introduce a multigrid algorithm to further reduce time-to-solution on stiff cases arising from continuous-and discontinuous-Galerkin discretizations. Results obtained on relevant single-physics reference solutions, demonstrate the feasibility of the methods, paving the way for high-order solutions of fully coupled multi-physics problems.

STMD↗

Probability of Initiation in Neutron Transport

We discuss the numerical solution of the nonlinear integro-differential equation for the probability of a divergent neutron chain in a stationary system (i.e., the probability of initiation (POI)). We follow the development described in Bell’s classic paper on the stochastic theory of neutron transport. As noted by Bell, the linearized form of this equation resembles the linear adjoint neutron transport equation. A matrix formalism for the discretized steady state (or forward) neutron equation in slab geometry is first developed and is then used to derive the discrete adjoint equation. A main advantage of this discrete development is that the resulting discrete adjoint equation does not depend upon how the multigroup cross sections for the forward problem are obtained. That is, we derive the discrete adjoint directly from the discrete forward equations rather than discretizing directly the adjoint equation. This also guarantees that the discrete adjoint operator is consistent with the inner product used to define the adjoint operator. We discuss three approaches for the numerical solution of the POI equations, and present numerical results on several test problems. The three solution methods are a simple fixed-point iteration, a second approach that is akin to a nonlinear Power iteration, and a third approach which uses a Newton-Krylov nonlinear solver. We also give sufficient conditions to guarantee the existence and uniqueness of nontrivial solutions to our discrete POI equations when the discrete system is supercritical, and that only the trivial solution exists when the discrete system is subcritical. Our approach is modeled after the analysis presented for the continuous POI equations by Mokhtar-Kharroubi and Jarmouni-Idrissi, and by Pazy and Rabinowitz.

42 ENGINEERING↗