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Turbulence-Resolving Simulations of Boundary-Layer Flows

BoundaryLayerDynamics.jl can simulate a range of physical problems, but its primary purpose is to simulate the evolution of turbulent flows in simplified representations of the atmospheric boundary-layer.

Main Characteristics

  • Direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large-eddy simulation (LES) of incompressible flow dynamics.
  • Three-dimensional Cartesian domain, with periodic boundary conditions along $x₁$ and $x₂$.
  • Spatial discretization based on truncated Fourier expansion along $x₁$ and $x₂$.
  • Spatial discretization based on second-order (central) finite differences on a staggered grid along $x₃$.
  • Explicit integration in time.
  • CPU-based computation with distributed-memory parallelization along $x₃$ using MPI.

Usage Overview

Running simulation consists of setting up a Model and then simulating its dynamics with evolve!, collecting output data along the way.

The Setup & Workflow page gives practical advice on setting up a project with BoundaryLayerDynamics.jl and running simulations both on personal machines and high-performance computing systems.

The Computational Model page explains how to set up a Model by configuring the desired computational domain, resolution of the discretization, and physical processes. It also documents the mathematical concepts that the computational model is based on.

The Evolution in Time page explains how to run a simulation using evolve!, after configuring the time-integration method and the output modules. It also documents how the time integration handles processes that are assumed to act instantaneously such as the pressure in incompressible flows.

Further Resources

You can obtain the code, report issues, or suggest improvements in the GitHub repository.

A paper describing the motivation for the project, the mathematical and physical models, their validation, as well as some performance measurements has been published in Geoscientific Model Development. Please cite this work if you use BoundaryLayerDynamics.jl in your research:

Schmid, M. F., Giometto, M. G., Lawrence, G. A., and Parlange, M. B. (2024). BoundaryLayerDynamics.jl v1.0: a modern codebase for atmospheric boundary-layer simulations. Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 321–333.