Parallel simulation of compressible flow using automatic differentiation and PETSc

Abstract

Many aerospace applications require parallel implicit solution strategies and software. The use of two computational tools, the Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific computing (PETSc) and ADIFOR, to implement a Newton-Krylov-Schwarz method with pseudo-transient continuation for a particular application, namely, a steady-state, fully implicit, three-dimensional compressible Euler model of flow over an M6 wing is considered. How automatic differentiation (AD) can be used within the PETSc framework to compute the required derivatives is described. Performance data demonstrating the suitability of AD and PETSc for this problem are presented. A synopsis of results and a description of opportunities for future work concludes this paper. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.