AcuTrace:

Particle Tracking
Postprocessor and
Coprocessor for AcuSolve

Rick Pember

March 2012

Altair Engineering, Inc.

Page 2

Motivation
Example
AcuTrace overview and history
Some details
Future work
Discussion and conclusions

Altair Engineering, Inc.

 With feature-less, massless particles:

Flow visualization tool
Postprocessing: mixing, flow characteristics, statistics, ...

Using particles with mass, temperature, composition, and userdefined quantities:

Particulate (multiphase) flows
Condensation,evaporation,chemistry,...
Bidirectional coupling with AcuSolve
Applications
l
to date
d
h
have b
been primarily
l industrial
d
l and
d other
h
mixing processes
...
Users can solve problems they can't
can t solve with AcuSolve alone

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Mixing of a 200,000 gallon water

storage tank
Mixing via innovative PAX Water
Technologies Lily impeller (1/3 HP)
Customer quote: AcuTrace results
results
show the excellent mixing
characteristics of the PAX Water
Lily Impeller
Impeller
complete circulation
no stagnant zones
important
i
t t in
i meeting
ti governmentt
mandated standards for potable
water storage tanks.

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Inputs
AcuSolve solution
Initial particle states: position,

Compute particle path

Particle path approximated by segments
Segments defined by end points
Segment end points are in adjacent
elements
l
t

Outputs
Particle path: all end points
Poincare: intersection with rectangle
Time cut: position, etc., at specific time

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 AcuTrace classic
Massless particles
Steady flow only
Turbulent and laminar flows
Turbulent diffusion option
Multiple reference frames
Stretch
No mesh motion or sliding
g interfaces
Explicit 4th-order Runge-Kutta (RK4)
integration
Parallel: master-slave paradigm

AcuTrace2
New (4+ yr) code
Capabilities
p
beyond
y
AcuTrace classic
First shipped with V1.7f (5/09)
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Physics
p
Massless particles
Steady, transient, cyclic flow
Turbulent and laminar flows
Moving
i meshes
h and
d sliding
lidi iinterfaces
f
Multiple reference frames: two approaches
Classic: Use local frame velocityy
Pseudo-transient (sliding interfaces and
moving mesh)
Produces more realistic trajectories than
the classic approach

Stretch
User-defined
U
d fi d functions
f
ti
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Integration
5th-order Time-Discontinuous Galerkin (TDG)
Implicit
Unconditionally stable
Stifflyy A-Stable
Space-time formulation facilitates coupling
with AcuSolve

Parallel
Hybrid MPI/OpenMP (like AcuSolve)
Distributed memory via MPI
Shared memory via OpenMP
Flow data shared by OpenMP threads

Output files use an indexed binary format for

fast and random access
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Problem setup
AcuSolve style input files
AcuConsole

Postprocessing
AcuTransTrace conversion
EnSight
AcuFieldView
AcuDisplay

Direct access of output files via

AcuPython

Unidirectional coupling with

AcuSolve
Usage: acuRunTrace
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

Bidirectional coupling with AcuSolve

Python interface to allow use by other solvers (Radioss,)
Finite mass particles
Turbulent diffusion

Page 10

Altair Engineering, Inc.

Basic equations
User defined functions
Time discontinuous Galerkin
Multiple reference frame treatment
Cyclic Flow
Bidirectional coupling

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Particle
Massless

r
Dx p
Dt

r r
= v f ( xp , t)

r
D
x
r r
Finite Mass
p
= vp ( xp , t)
Dt
r
Dv p r r r r
mp
= Fp ( x p , v p , v f ,U f , t )
Dt

Stretch
Page 12

r
r
Dl
Tr
= vfl
Dt
Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Allows user to specify additional evolution equations

r r
Di
v
= fi x p , t,U p ,U f ;1,...,n;Vudf
Dt

i = 1,..., n

User writes f and invokes AcuMakeLib to build library

Library automatically loaded at run time
Integrated with TDG method
Prototypical example: stretch
Stretch is a useful mixing diagnostic
User defined functions have allowed R&D engineers to add new
diagnostics on their own
o n

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

r r
r
x& p = v f ( x p , t )

t n +1

tn

r r r
r r
r r r
w( x& p v f ) + w[x p ] + w& ( x& p v f )dt = 0

2
[xr ] = xr (tn+ ) xr (tn ) = xr (tn+ ) xrn

Approximate functions with P2 basis

Three point Gaussian quadrature
Highly accurate and stable

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Classic
Move particle by local reference frame
velocity
Subtract frame rotational velocity
from the flow velocity
Pseudotransient
Define mesh motion and a transient
velocity field by
Split interface between fixed and
rotating frames
Rotate mesh and the flow velocity
in the rotating frame in time using
the frame rotation rate
Move
M
th
the particle
ti l using
i g thi
this mesh
h
motion and transient velocity
As if we solved the full sliding
mesh problem

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

Pseudotransient

Page 16

Classic

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Classic: Blue
Pseudotransient: Red

Trajectories deviate when rotating region entered

Classic trajectory kinks upon entry and exit of region
Pseudotransient option eliminates these anomalies
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Applicable to time periodic

((cyclic)
y
) flow
User specifies a small number of
steps (covering a cycle) to be
used repeatedly
Allows short-time AcuSolve runs
to drive long-time
g
AcuTrace runs
This option is being used to look
at chaotic laminar mixing
Cylinder vortex shedding
problem at right used to test
p
this option
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 AcuSolve and AcuTrace run concurrently

AcuSolve provides AcuTrace with flow data
AcuTrace provides AcuSolve with sources
Projection of particle sources at particle
quadrature p
q
points onto flow mesh
Projection weights source by shape function
and the quadrature point weight
Conservation of mass, momentum, energy,
and composition is exact

AcuSolve treats AcuTrace as another stagger

Iterative solve

Coupling AcuSolve and AcuTrace extends the

class of problems addressed by either alone
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 At each node a, this translates to

dq p
dt
Sa =

t n +1

tn

n particles

p =1

t n +1

tn

r
= f (t , x p , q p ,...)
r
r
N a ( x p (t )) f (t , x p , q p ,...)dt
N

q
r
r
r
r
N a ( x p (t )) f (t , x p , q p ,...)dt = wq tf (t ( q ), x ( q )) N a ( x ( q ))

q =1

Initial test case: heat transfer

m p cv , p

DTp

= k (T f Tp )

Dt
k = Nu
N D p k f

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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 Complete current development

Bidirectional coupling with AcuSolve
Python interface to couple with other codes
Finite mass particles
Turbulent diffusion
Particle-particle
p
interactions
Hard sphere model
Soft sphere model
Fluid force on approaching particles
Additional
Additi
l equations
ti
Chemical reactions, heat and mass transfer
Condensation, evaporation, dissolution, precipitation, ...
Improve documentation
Prototype additional equations with user defined functions
Customer input/feedback to help prioritize tasks
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Altair Engineering, Inc.

 AcuTrace provides unique particle tracking capabilities

Distinguishing features
Uni- and bidirectional coupling with AcuSolve
Time discontinuous Galerkin method
Unconditionally stable
Highly accurate

Highly extendible via user defined functions

Novel, improved treatment for multiple reference frames

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Altair Engineering, Inc.