Capabilities and Roadmap

This section documents a non-exhaustive list of current AMR-Wind capabilities and roadmap for future capabilities.

Tip

If your project relies on a capability that is not yet present in AMR-Wind, please create an issue on the code project page.

Note

This reflects the capabilities for AMR-Wind version 2.1.0 and above.

Capabilities

Tip

The capabilities are linked to the relevant input file references (keyword inp) and documentation (keyword doc). Searching for those keywords in the test/test_files directory will give concrete examples of the feature usage.

Methods and models

  • Numerical methods

    • Advection: second order, piecewise parabolic, piecewise linear, WENO, Bell-Dawson-Shubin [doc, inp]

    • Diffusion: second order, explicit, Crank-Nicolson, and implicit [doc, inp]

    • Mesh refinement: static refinement for specified regions [inp], adaptive mesh refinement [inp] (e.g., field based, curvature, q-criterion, vorticity [inp])

    • Mesh mapping for non-uniform cartesian grids [doc, inp]

  • Equations systems

    • Incompressible and low Mach formulations of Navier-Stokes [doc]

    • Temperature

    • Level set

    • Subgrid scale kinetic energy [doc]

    • Specific dissipation rate [doc]

    • Passive scalar

    • Source terms for these PDEs [doc, inp]

  • Turbulence modeling

    • Large Eddy Simulation: constant Smagorinsky, AMD, one equation \(k_{sgs}\), Kosovic [doc, inp]

    • Wall models: log-law, constant stress, Schumann [doc, inp]

    • Reynolds-Average Navier-Stokes: \(k\)-\(\omega\) SST (and IDDES variant) and One-equation TKE model of Axell and Liungman [doc, inp]

  • Transport models

    • Constant transport coefficients [inp]

    • Two phase transport (separate coefficients for each material) [inp]

Flow physics

  • Wind energy physics

    • Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL): various stability states (stable, unstable, neutral), precursor simulations with inflow boundary planes for wind farm simulations, anelastic formulation, mesoscale forcing, geostrophic forcing, Coriolis forcing, Monin-Obukhov similarity theory, gravity forcing, gravity wave damping [inp]

    • Actuator turbine representations: Joukowsky disks, uniform disks, actuator line [inp]

    • Coupling with OpenFAST

    • Coupling with Nalu-Wind for blade resolved simulations

  • Multiphase flows [doc]

    • Prescribed flow cases for verification of volume-of-fluid transport: Zalesak disk, vortex patch

    • Prescribed flow cases for verification of momentum equation coupled to volume-of-fluid transport: Zalesak disk scalar vel, vortex patch scalar vel

    • Validation and demonstration cases: sloshing tank, dam break, breaking waves, falling or inertial droplet

    • Methods to initialize volume-of-fluid field from an initial levelset field

    • Monitors conservation of mass and momentum

  • Ocean wave forcing (for multiphase flows) [inp]

    • Wave types: linear (monochromatic), Stokes (second to fifth order), irregular (input by modes files from HOS-Ocean)

    • Relaxation zones force wave profile to generate waves at lower x boundary or force toward quiescent flat interface at upper x boundary. Wave profile can also be enforced (instead of numerical beach) at upper x boundary for periodic simulations.

  • Boundary conditions

    • Periodic, outflow, inflow, walls, user-defined inflows [inp]

    • Wall models (e.g., wall functions, stress) [doc, inp]

    • Inflow planes from precursor simulations [doc, inp]

    • Mesoscale forcing [doc, inp]

    • Synthetic turbulence [inp]

  • Geometry

    • Immersed boundary forcing method with stair-case type terrain and wall function [doc]

    • Coupling with Nalu-Wind for body-conforming meshes with overset methodology

  • Miscellaneous cases

    • Verification and validation cases: method of manufactured solutions, convecting Taylor-Vortex, Rayleigh-Taylor, passive scalar, Burggraf flow, channel flow, Ekman spiral, vortex dipole, vortex ring

  • Postprocessing

    • Visualization with VisIt, Paraview, yt

    • Sampling of fields with planes, point probes, lines, volumes, lidar, and radar [doc, inp]

    • Sampling of fields at probes that follow free surface of liquid-gas flows [inp]

    • Scalar outputs such as kinetic energy, enstrophy, total wave energy, and norms [doc, inp]

    • Turbulence averaging quantities such as Reynolds stresses [inp]

    • Field plane averaging and second and third order moments

    • Derived fields and field operators such as vorticity, q-criterion, strain-rates, gradients, divergence, Laplacian [inp]

    • in-situ post-processing with Ascent

High performance computing

  • Highly parallelized and performance portable

    • Shared memory parallelism with OpenMP threading

    • Distributed memory parallelism with MPI

    • Supports all major compilers (e.g., GCC, Intel, LLVM)

    • Runs on all major GPU vendors (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel)

    • Supported build systems: cmake, spack

  • Supported linear solvers

    • native AMReX solvers such as MLMG [inp]

    • hypre

Roadmap

The roadmap is an evolving, living document and does not purport to track every future capability. It is not a promise of future capabilities. The main use case is to inform users of potential upcoming new capabilities.

Current development

  • Inflow-outflow BCs to enable coupling amr-wind to ERF mesoscale modeling software

  • Temporal and spatial varying MMC forcing