Modeling and Simulation Group Meeting

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Adaptive Mesh Refinement: Algorithms and Applications

Speaker: Ann Almgren, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 517

Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025, 12:30 p.m.

Synopsis:

Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is one of several techniques for dynamically modifying the spatial resolution of a simulation in particular regions of the spatial domain. Block-structured AMR specifically refines the mesh by defining locally structured regions with finer spatial, and possibly temporal, resolution. This combination of locally structured meshes within an irregular global hierarchy is in some sense the best of both worlds in that it enables regular local data access while enabling greater flexibility in the overall computation.

Originally, block-structured AMR was designed for solving hyperbolic conservation laws with explicit time-stepping; in this case the changes to solution methodology in transforming a single-level solver to an AMR-based solver are relatively straightforward.  AMR has come a long way, however, and the more complex the simulation, the more complex the changes required to effectively use AMR.  One can even consider whether to use different physical models (or different codes) at different levels of resolution. In this talk I will give an overview of block-structured AMR for different types of applications and will focus on a few key exemplars for how to think about adaptivity for multiphysics. multiscale simulations.