Recording of Synthetik Briefing from the 2022 MFEM Community Workshop
A recording of our briefing from the outstanding 2022 MFEM Community Workshop is now available on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory YouTube page.
Title: blastFEM: GPU-Accelerated, High-Performance, Energy-Efficient Solver.
#FEM #OpenSource #MFEM
The U.S. Department of Energy has funded Synthetik to leverage the MFEM libraries and develop a GPU-accelerated, very high-performance and energy efficient solver for highly compressible flows.
Link to video: https://youtu.be/tzQUlm0hlvE
BACKGROUND
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has funded the integration of Synthetik’s blastFoam software and the ASCR-funded MFEM libraries to deliver blastFEM - a higher order, Discontinuous Galerkin (DG), GPU-accelerated, Finite Element (FE) solver for highly compressible flows, including high-explosive detonation and airblast.
Highly compressible multiphase and reactive flows are important, and manifest across a myriad of practical applications, including: novel energy production and propulsion methods (e.g. RDEs, rockets, nuclear, hydrogen safety), building design, safety and energy efficiency (e.g. blast load requirements, insurance and reinsurance, building material selection), material discovery (e.g. novel energetics), and maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. There are, however, few tools available to industry capable of simulating these flows at a resolution and scale suitable to make predictions of adequate detail – at least within reasonable timeframes and budgetary constraints – to inform engineers and designers.
A next generation, highly efficient simulation code is needed that can deliver results within useful timeframes (e.g., shorter run times, lower energy usage, economical), with sufficient detail (e.g., high-resolution, flow sufficiently resolved, engineering insight is gained) to be useful to support simulation-driven design, discovery and optimization. Furthermore, a code that has been designed to run on modern and emerging heterogeneous architectures (e.g., multi-node, multi-GPU), and can efficiently leverage these architectures though the use of numerical schemes designed to maximized computational efficiency (e.g., reduce communication between nodes, maximize use of GPU’s or other accelerators).
In response to this requirement the U.S. Department of Energy has funded the integration of Synthetik’s commercial blastFoam software and the ASCR-funded MFEM libraries to deliver blastFEM - a GPU-accelerated, very high-performance and energy-efficient solver for highly compressible flows, including high-explosive detonation and airblast.
During the initial phase of this effort, Synthetik will: (1) build a GPU-accelerated compressible flow solver based on MFEM and (2) carry out preliminary feasibility studies to characterize solver performance and energy efficiency to compare with blastFoam CPU benchmarks.
The impact of this work will be substantial and provide a cross-cutting, step change in capability for American researchers, engineers, academics and scientists. The blastFEM solver has immediate commercial application across multiple industries, and will support Synthetik’s defense, engineering, security, and risk consultancy work. Furthermore, Synthetik will contribute back to the MFEM project by providing a foundational application that other researchers and scientists can customize and use to study related phenomena of interest (e.g., compressible multiphase reactive and detonating flows).
The development of blastFEM further reinforces Synthetik’s unique position in the market as leaders in physics-based modeling and simulation of solid-state detonation, propellants, and airblast, while simultaneously enabling and encouraging others to more readily access and leverage the powerful MFEM project.