Adaptive, High-Order, and Scalable Software Elements for Dynamic Rupture Simulations in Complex Geometries

Abstract:

The goal of this work is to develop a new set of simulation tools for earthquake rupture dynamics based on state-of-the-art high-order, adaptive numerical methods capable of handling complex geometries. High-order methods are ideal for earthquake rupture simulations as the problems are wave-dominated and the waves excited in simulations propagate over distance much larger than their fundamental wavelength. When high-order methods are used for such problems significantly fewer degrees of freedom are required as compared with low-order methods. The base numerical method in our new software elements is a discontinuous Galerkin method based on curved, Kronecker product hexahedral elements. We currently use MPI for off-node parallelism and are in the process of exploring strategies for on-node parallelism. Spatial mesh adaptivity is handled using the p4est library and temporal adaptivity is achieved through an Adams-Bashforth based local time stepping method; we are presently in the process of including dynamic spatial adaptivity which we believe will be valuable for capturing the small-scale features around the propagating rupture front. One of the key features of our software elements is that the method is provably stable, even after the inclusion of the nonlinear frictions laws which govern rupture dynamics. In this presentation we will both outline the structure of the software elements as well as validate the rupture dynamics with SCEC benchmark test problems. We are also presently developing several realistic simulation geometries which may also be reported on. Finally, the software elements that we have designed are fully public domain and have been designed with tightly coupled, wave dominated multiphysics applications in mind. This latter design decisions means the software elements are applicable to many other geophysical and non-geophysical applications.