Computational physics and applied mathematics capability review June 8-10, 2010
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory will review its Computational Physics and Applied Mathematics (CPAM) capabilities in 2010. The goals of capability reviews are to assess the quality of science, technology, and engineering (STE) performed by the capability, evaluate the integration of this capability across the Laboratory and within the scientific community, examine the relevance of this capability to the Laboratory's programs, and provide advice on the current and future directions of this capability. This is the first such review for CPAM, which has a long and unique history at the Laboratory, starting from the inception of the Laboratory in 1943. The CPAM capability covers an extremely broad technical area at Los Alamos, encompassing a wide array of disciplines, research topics, and organizations. A vast array of technical disciplines and activities are included in this capability, from general numerical modeling, to coupled multi-physics simulations, to detailed domain science activities in mathematics, methods, and algorithms. The CPAM capability involves over 12 different technical divisions and a majority of our programmatic and scientific activities. To make this large scope tractable, the CPAM capability is broken into the following six technical 'themes.' These themes represent technical slices through the CPAM capability and collect critical core competencies of the Laboratory, each of which contributes to the capability (and each of which is divided into multiple additional elements in the detailed descriptions of the themes in subsequent sections), as follows. Theme 1: Computational Fluid Dynamics - This theme speaks to the vast array of scientific capabilities for the simulation of fluids under shocks, low-speed flow, and turbulent conditions - which are key, historical, and fundamental strengths of the Laboratory. Theme 2: Partial Differential Equations - The technical scope of this theme is the applied mathematics and numerical solution of partial differential equations (broadly defined) in a variety of settings, including particle transport, solvers, and plasma physics. Theme 3: Monte Carlo - Monte Carlo was invented at Los Alamos. This theme discusses these vitally important methods and their application in everything from particle transport, to condensed matter theory, to biology. Theme 4: Molecular Dynamics - This theme describes the widespread use of molecular dynamics for a variety of important applications, including nuclear energy, materials science, and biological modeling. Theme 5: Discrete Event Simulation - The technical scope of this theme represents a class of complex system evolutions governed by the action of discrete events. Examples include network, communication, vehicle traffic, and epidemiology modeling. Theme 6: Integrated Codes - This theme discusses integrated applications (comprised of all of the supporting science represented in Themes 1-5) that are of strategic importance to the Laboratory and the nation. The Laboratory has in approximately 10 million source lines of code in over 100 different such strategically important applications. Of these themes, four of them will be reviewed during the 2010 review cycle: Themes 1,2, 3, and 6. Because these reviews occur every three years, Themes 4 and 5 will be reviewed in 2013, along with Theme 6 (which will be reviewed during each review, owing to this theme's role as an integrator of the supporting science represented by the other five themes). Yearly written status reports will be provided to the CPAM Committee Chair during off-cycle years.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1016107
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-10-03667; LA-UR-10-3667; TRN: US201112%%222
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Computational Physics and Applied Mathematics Capability Review ; June 8, 2010 ; Los Alamos, NM
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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