This paper presents an initial study that is intended to explore the development of a scalable fully-implicit stabilized unstructured finite element (FE) capability for low-Mach-number resistive MHD. The discussion considers the development of the stabilized FE formulation and the underlying fully-coupled preconditioned Newton-Krylov nonlinear iterative solver. To enable robust, scalable and efficient solution of the large-scale sparse linear systems generated by the Newton linearization, fully-coupled algebraic multilevel preconditioners are employed. Verification results demonstrate the expected order-of-acuracy for the stabilized FE discretization of a 2D vector potential form for the steady and transient solution of the resistive MHD system. In addition, this study puts forth a set of challenging prototype problems that include the solution of an MHD Faraday conduction pump, a hydromagnetic Rayleigh-Bernard linear stability calculation, and a magnetic island coalescence problem. Initial results that explore the scaling of the solution methods are presented on up to 4096 processors for problems with up to 64M unknowns on a CrayXT3/4. Additionally, a large-scale proof-of-capability calculation for 1 billion unknowns for the MHD Faraday pump problem on 24,000 cores is presented.

A numerical method is described for inviscid, compressible, multi-material flow in two space dimensions. The flow is governed by the multi-material Euler equations with a general mixture equation of state. Composite overlapping grids are used to handle complex flow geometry and block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is used to locally increase grid resolution near shocks and material interfaces. The discretization of the governing equations is based on a high-resolution Godunov method, but includes an energy correction designed to suppress numerical errors that develop near a material interface for standard, conservative shock-capturing schemes. The energy correction is constructed based on a uniform pressure-velocity flow and is significant only near the captured interface. A variety of two-material flows are presented to verify the accuracy of the numerical approach and to illustrate its use. These flows assume an equation of state for the mixture based on JonesWilkins-Lee (JWL) forms for the components. This equation of state includes a mixture of ideal gases as a special case. Flow problems considered include unsteady one-dimensional shock-interface collision, steady interaction of an planar interface and an oblique shock, planar shock interaction with a collection of gas-filled cylindrical inhomogeneities, and the impulsive motion of the two-component mixture in a rigid cylindrical vessel.

A stable partitioned algorithm for coupling incompressible flows with compressible elastic solids is described. This added-mass partitioned (AMP) scheme requires no sub-iterations, can be made fully secondor higher-order accurate, and remains stable even in the presence of strong added-mass effects. The approach extends the scheme of Banks et al. [1,2] for compressible flow, and uses Robin (mixed) boundary conditions with the fluid and solid solvers at the interface. The AMP Robin conditions are derived from a local characteristic decomposition in the solid at the interface. Two forms of the Robin conditions are derived depending on whether the fluid equations are advanced with a fractional-step method or not. A normal mode analysis for a discretization of an FSI model problem is performed to show that the new AMP algorithm is stable for any ratio of the solid and fluid densities, including the case of very light solids when the added-mass effects are large. In contrast, it is shown that a traditional partitioned algorithm involving a Dirichlet-Neumann coupling for the same FSI problem is formally unconditionally unstable for any ratio of densities. Exact traveling wave solutions are derived for three FSI model problems of increasing complexity, and these solutions are used to verify the stability and accuracy of the corresponding numerical results obtained from the AMP algorithm for the cases of light, medium and heavy solids.

A common attribute of capturing schemes used to find approximate solutions to the Euler equations is a sub-linear rate of convergence with respect to mesh resolution. Purely nonlinear jumps, such as shock waves produce a first-order convergence rate, but linearly degenerate discontinuous waves, where present, produce sub-linear convergence rates which eventually dominate the global rate of convergence. The classical explanation for this phenomenon investigates the behavior of the exact solution to the numerical method in combination with the finite error terms, often referred to as the modified equation. For a first-order method, the modified equation produces the hyperbolic evolution equation with second-order diffusive terms. In the frame of reference of the traveling wave, the solution of a discontinuous wave consists of a diffusive layer that grows with a rate of t 1/2 , yielding a convergence rate of 1/2. Self-similar heuristics for higher order discretizations produce a growth rate for the layer thickness of ∆t 1/(p+1) which yields an estimate for the convergence rate as p/(p+1) where p is the order of the discretization. In this paper we show that this estimated convergence rate can be derived with greater rigor for both dissipative and dispersive forms of the discrete error. In particular, the form of the analytical solution for linear modified equations can be solved exactly. These estimates and forms for the error are confirmed in a variety of demonstrations ranging from simple linear waves to multidimensional solutions of the Euler equations.