A practical visualization strategy for large-scale supernovae CFD simulations

SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Sketches, SA'11. 2011 ; Vol. 15, No. 15. pp. 15
Gerstmann, Derek ; Potter, T. ; Houston, M. ; Bourke, Paul ; Ma, K.-L. ; Wicenec, Andreas.


Abstract

Simulating the expansion of a Type II supernova using an adaptive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) engine yields a complex mixture of turbulent flow with dozens of physical properties. The dataset shown in this sketch was initially simulated on iVEC's EPIC supercomputer (a 9600 core Linux cluster) using FLASH [Fryxell et al. 2000] to model the thermonuclear explosion, and later post-processed using a novel integration technique to derive the radio frequency emission spectra of the expanding shock-wave front [Potter et al. 2011]. Model parameters have been chosen to simulate the asymmetric properties of the SN 1987A remnant [Potter et al. 2009].

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