Hochschule Karlsruhe Hochschule Karlsruhe - University of Applied Sciences
Hochschule Karlsruhe Hochschule Karlsruhe - University of Applied Sciences

Institute for Digital Materials Research

BMBF: Skampy - Ultra-Scalable Multiphysics Simulations for Solidification Processes in Metals

Contact: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Britta Nestler
Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Start date: 2016
End date: 2019

In this proposal, a highly scalable and user-friendly simulation framework for phase field models in materials science is to be realised, which enables an extremely fine spatial and temporal resolution and thus the mapping of all relevant physical effects. This leads to extremely high demands on the computing power. In order to achieve high energy efficiency, the development of simulation software in the future must be optimised much more than before with regard to absolute performance, i.e. the lowest possible resource consumption for a given simulation accuracy. In addition to excellent scaling, an increasingly large part of the computing power must be provided by fine-grained concurrency within the computer nodes. At the Chair of Systems Simulation in Erlangen, the framework waLBerla is being developed for this purpose, which has already demonstrated excellent performance for a first prototypical phase field simulation. The recipe for success lies in the specialisation of the models used and the numerical algorithms as well as in the specialisation of the data structures, and in the systematic optimisation for the respective platform, typically a many-core architecture. The project also aims at portability, flexibility and productivity by using a sustainable, structured development process.