Verification of ALEGRA Simulations

Computer simulation is a key component in modern scientific analysis. Simulations provide more control over variables and more detail in their outputs than their experimental counterparts while allowing for more runs at a fraction of the price. However, simulation results are worthless without verification, which ensures that a simulation can reliably compute the results of a simulation with a known analytical solution.

Verification becomes more difficult with the growth of size and complexity in the simulations. Analysts at Sandia National Laboratories are leveraging the python scripting, scalable parallel processing, and multiview technologies of ParaView to simplify the verification of ALEGRA simulations for High Energy Density Physics (HEDP). The embedded python interpreter allows users to easily build custom parallel computations for analytical solutions, volume integrals, and error metrics over large meshes. Client side scripting also facilitates automated post-processing verification and ParaView’s multiview capability facilitates comparison of results. The visualization shown here displays the computed error metrics for a 13 million-cell unstructured data set.

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.