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Moving curved mesh adaptation for higher-order finite element simulations

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Abstract

Higher-order finite element method requires valid curved meshes in three-dimensional domains to achieve the solution accuracy. When applying adaptive higher-order finite elements in large-scale simulations, complexities that arise include moving the curved mesh adaptation along with the critical domains to achieve computational efficiency. This paper presents a procedure that combines Bézier mesh curving and size-driven mesh adaptation technologies to address those requirements. A moving mesh size field drives a curved mesh modification procedure to generate valid curved meshes that have been successfully analyzed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory researchers to simulate the short-range wakefields in particle accelerators. The analysis results for a 8-cavity cryomodule wakefield demonstrate that valid curvilinear meshes not only make the time-domain simulations more reliable, but also improve the computational efficiency up to 30%. The application of moving curved mesh adaptation to an accelerator cavity coupler shows a tenfold reduction in execution time and memory usage without loss in accuracy as compared to uniformly refined meshes.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by US Department of Energy under DOE Grant number DE-FC02-06ER25769 and DE-AC02-76SF00515.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scientific Computation Research Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Xiao-Juan Luo & Mark S. Shephard

  2. SLAC National Accelerator Lab, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    Lie-Quan Lee, Lixin Ge & Cho Ng

Authors
  1. Xiao-Juan Luo
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  2. Mark S. Shephard
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  3. Lie-Quan Lee
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  4. Lixin Ge
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  5. Cho Ng
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Correspondence to Mark S. Shephard.

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Luo, XJ., Shephard, M.S., Lee, LQ. et al. Moving curved mesh adaptation for higher-order finite element simulations. Engineering with Computers 27, 41–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-010-0179-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-010-0179-5

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