PHASTA
This page serves as a gateway for information related to the two-phase level set code implemented in PHASTA.
Introductory Information¶
"Parallel Hierarchic Adaptive Stabilized Transient Analysis" or PHASTA software currently can model compressible or incompressible, laminar or turbulent, steady or unsteady flows in 3D, using unstructured grids.
Also refer to the SCOREC Research Wiki PHASTA pages.
Building the software¶
If you are building/running the incompressible solver be sure to first
load the libles module. On the BGQ and DRP systems the command is
module load proprietary/libles
and on DRP it is
module load libles
Problem Setup¶
The PHASTA problem definition and mesh generation GUI requires a graphical connection to the CCI. SSH X-Forwarding and the VNC are two ways to establish this connection; the VNC is preferred. Once connected to the VNC [link], the GUI is launched to set solver and output controls [link] material properties, boundary and initial conditions [link], set mesh generation controls [link], generate the mesh, and generate the PHASTA input files [link].
Connect to the CCI VNC¶
Set Solver and Output Controls¶
See PhSolverSimulationControls.odt for a description of the commonly used controls for a two phase simulation.
Define Boundary/Initial Conditions¶
Boundary conditions are applied in the SimModeler problem definition and mesh generation GUI.
Essential BC's need to be user-set over faces and optionally over edges. If any of the thermodynamic quantities are set on an edge, then any thermodynamic quantity from the associated faces is not inherited. If any velocity component is set, then any of the velocity components from the faces is not inherited. Everything as above for vertex w.r.t. associated edges.
comp1: group of magnitude and direction, when one velocity is set
comp3: group of magnitude and direction, when three velocities are set
comp1, comp3 are not exactly attributes but velocity attribute
groups. Both contain a vector direction and magnitude. Both cant be set
at the same time. comp1 implies velocity is set only in one direction
and is free in the other directions. comp3 means velocities are set in
all the three directions and its magnitude and direction are those of
the resultant.
The natural pressure boundary condition does not enforce an exact
value for the pressure at all the nodes located at the outflow face. It
actually weekly prescribe the pressure magnitude over the plane. If the
flow field is laminar and velocity field is smooth, the pressure
distribution is almost uniform. If the flow field is turbulent and
velocity field has strong fluctuations, the pressure field also shows
some fluctuations.
Select the model, Selection->Select Model, to make the
initial velocity and initial pressure attributes active.
The initial velocity attribute specifies the initial velocity field
over the entire domain via a velocity vector u_x, u_y, u_z in units
of m/s.
The initial pressure attribute specifies the initial pressure field
over the entire domain in units of Pascals.
Set Mesh Generation Controls¶
Follow these instructions to generate a mesh using a script.
PreProcessing¶
See Chef
Flow Solver Execution¶
The following instructions are for running the flow solver only. To run the automated adaptive loop, which iterates execution between the flow solver and mesh adaptation, proceed to Automated Adaptive Execution. Alternatively, the Running Through the Portal may be used to run certain simulations.
The flow solver requires that the following directory structure and files exist. $PWD is the directory where the phSolver executable is located.
$PWD/<phSolver-executable>
$PWD/input.config
$PWD/solver.inp
$PWD/<NUM_PROCESSES>-procs_case
input.configcontains ALL the phSolver input options. All options here should be set to their default values.solver.inpcontains a subset of the phSolver input options. These options should be set to non-default options appropriate for the simulation. See PhSolverSimulationControls.odt for a description of the commonly used controls for a two phase simulation.<NUM_PROCESSES>-procs_casedirectory contains the PHASTA format mesh,geombc.dat.*, the PHASTA format field datarestart..*andnumstart.dat, contains a single integer that defines the timestep number.
Job Submission¶
The CCI systems are scheduled with Slurm. Instructions for creating job submission scripts can be found on the Slurm Wiki page.
The general command for running PHASTA's incompressible phastaIC.exe
or compressible
mpirun -np NUM_PROCESSES phasta[C|IC].exe
Depending on the CCI system being used mpirun may be replaced with
srun and/or require additional arguments.
Output¶
For the flow solve the following is output from phSolver for each timestep:
| time step | timestep size | elapsed physical time | elapsed wall time | residual | 'normalized' residual | max(delta U/U) | max(delta p/P) | CG - GMRES iterations | MAX CFL | mesh region id with max CFL | |
| 5 | 1.000E-10 | 5.000E-10 | 1.629E+02 | 2.303E-05 | ( 50) | 1.219E-01 | 1.346E+00 | < 184- 902| 16> | [ 16 - 10] | 3.397E+00 | 101 |
Columns seven and eight, max(delta U/U) and max(delta p/P), are listing the max percentage change of the solution in this iteration. If they are large then you are far from convergence of a steady solution or perhaps taking a large time step.
For the convection of the interface and distance field by flow the following is output from phSolver for each timestep:
| time step | timestep size | elapsed physical time | elapsed wall time | residual | max(delta phi/phi) | GMRES iterations | MAX CFL | mesh region id with max CFL |
| 5 | 1.000E-10 | 5.000E-10 | 1.630E+02 | 4.932E-09 | 1.021E-05 | [ 10] | 4.589E-02 | 436 |
For redistancing the following is output from phSolver at each timestep for each redistancing iteration:
| time step | pseudo timestep size | elapsed physical time | elapsed wall time | residual | max(delta phi/phi) | GMRES iterations | MAX pseudo CFL | mesh region id with max pseudo CFL |
| 5 | 1.317E-08 | 1.357E-08 | 1.635E+02 | 1.477E-19 | 1.697E-06 | [ 10] | 3.996E-01 | 101 |
where phi is the signed distance field.
Automated Adaptive Execution¶
See PhastaChef
PHASTA Web-Portal¶
The PHASTA Web-Portal, https://phasta.scigap.org/, supports execution
of PHASTA on the CCI BlueGene/Q through a web-based interface. If you
are interested in using the portal please contact
.
PostProcessing¶
Note that the following instructions assume that the Paraview module with customizations for PHASTA has been loaded.
Using Paraview in Serial with multiple parts¶
Create phasta.pht with the following contents:
The following fields might need editing in this file:
number_of_pieces--> should be set to the total number of partitions/parts to load (the number of cores used for the calculation by PHASTA in this case 128)number_of_steps--> total number of time-steps to loadstart_index--> starting time-step (looks for restart.value.files) increment_index_by--> interval between consecutive time-steps to load
Launch ParaView and load phasta.pht file from
file menu.
Using Paraview in parallel with multiple parts¶
Load the following phasta.pht, making the edits discussed above, file into paraview:
Papers and Publications¶
PHASTA has enabled the following publications.