Flexible spectral algorithms for simulating astrophysical and geophysical flows

Large-scale numerical simulations are key to studying the complex physical systems that surround us. Simulations provide the ability to perform simplified numerical experiments to build our understanding of large-scale processes which cannot be controlled and examined in the laboratory. This dissertation develops a new open-source computational framework, Dedalus, for solving a diverse range of equations used to model such systems and applies the code to the study of stellar and oceanic fluid flows. In the first part, the spectral algorithms used in Dedalus are introduced and the design and development of the code are described. In particular, the code's symbolic equation specification, arbitrary-dimensional parallelization, and sparse spectral discretization systems are detailed. This project provides the scientific community with an easy-to-use tool that can efficiently and accurately simulate many processes arising in geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Burns, Keaton James.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nevin N. Weinberg and Glenn R. Flierl.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/119103

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/119103