Chrono: A Parallel Physics Library for Rigid-Body, Flexible-Body, and Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

The last decade witnessed a manifest shift in the microprocessor industry towards chip designs that promote parallel computing. Until recently the privilege of a select group of large research centers, Teraflop computing is becoming a commodity owing to inexpensive GPU cards and multi to many-core x86 processors. This paradigm shift towards large scale parallel computing has been leveraged in Chrono, a freely available C++ multi-physics simulation package. Chrono is made up of a collection of loosely coupled components that facilitate different aspects of multi-physics modeling, simulation, and visualization. This contribution provides an overview of Chrono::Engine, Chrono::Flex, Chrono::Fluid, and Chrono::Render, which are modules that can capitalize on the processing power of hundreds of parallel processors. Problems that can be tackled in Chrono include, but are not limited to, granular material dynamics, tangled large flexible structures with self contact, particulate flows, and tracked vehicle mobility. The paper presents an overview of each of these modules and illustrates through several examples the potential of this multi-physics library.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA590076

Entities

People

  • Alessandro Tasora
  • Andrew Bartholomew
  • Andrew Seidl
  • Arman Pazouki
  • Dan Negrut
  • Daniel Melanz
  • David Lamb
  • Hammad Mazhar
  • Justin Madsen
  • Toby Heyn

Organizations

  • University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Central Processing Units
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Granular Materials
  • Graphics Processing Unit
  • High Performance Computing
  • Instruction Set Architecture
  • Operating Systems
  • Parallel Computing
  • Parallel Processing
  • Parallel Processors
  • Simulations
  • Simulators
  • Three Dimensional

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Educational Psychology
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.