High-Order Accurate Particle-In-Cell (PIC) Methods on Unstructured Grids with Applications to Microwave Generation and Accelerator Modeling

Abstract

A thoroughly validated, robust, and efficiently solver for the electromagnetics problem continues to be extended to provide a basic field solver for the EM-PIC problem. This has resulted in a first generation of a DG-FEM based PIC method on unstructured grids. The particle mover relies on high-order interpolation, efficient local search algorithms to locate the particles, and a level set approach to implement elastic/inelastic interactions with boundaries. Charge and current, redistribution computations use large smooth weight functions, dramatically decreasing the number of particles needed in a computational cell as compared to the compared to the simple redistribution schemes typically used. A large smooth Gaussian-like distribution function is used as a regularized for the particle per particle to sums the influence of the particles into the charge and current density field variables. Currently, a constant particle influence-radius ensures charge conservation in the domain, but requires a variable number of element.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2006
Accession Number
ADA456826

Entities

People

  • Jan S. Hesthaven

Organizations

  • Brown University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Boundaries
  • Charged Particles
  • Computations
  • Current Density
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Distribution Functions
  • Electromagnetic Fields
  • Equations
  • Estimators
  • Geometry
  • Mathematics
  • Microwaves
  • Physical Properties
  • Radiation
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Operations Research
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics