PyFR v2.0.3: Towards industrial adoption of scale-resolving simulations

Abstract

PyFR is an open-source cross-platform computational fluid dynamics framework based on the high-order Flux Reconstruction approach, specifically designed for undertaking high-accuracy scale-resolving simulations in the vicinity of complex engineering geometries. Since the initial release of PyFR v0.1.0 in 2013, a range of new capabilities have been added to the framework, with a view to enabling industrial adoption. In this work, we provide details of these enhancements as released in PyFR v2.0.3, including improvements to cross-platform performance (new backends, extensions of the DSL, new matrix multiplication providers, improvements to the data layout, use of task graphs) and improvements to numerical stability (modal filtering, anti-aliasing, artificial viscosity, entropy filtering), as well as the addition of prismatic, tetrahedral and pyramid shaped elements, improved domain decomposition support for mixed element grids, improved handling of curved element meshes, the addition of an adaptive time-stepping capability, the addition of incompressible Euler and Navier-Stokes solvers, improvements to file formats and the development of a plugin architecture. We also explain efforts to grow an engaged developer and user community and provided a range of examples that show how our user base is applying PyFR to solve a wide range of fundamental, applied and industrial flow problems. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of PyFR v2.0.3 for a supersonic Taylor-Green vortex case, with shocks and turbulence, and provided latest performance and scaling results on up to 1024 AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators of Frontier at ORNL (each with two GCDs) and up to 2048 Nvidia GH200 GPUs of Alps at CSCS. We note that absolute performance of PyFR accounting for the totality of both hardware and software improvements has, conservatively, increased by almost 50× over the last decade.

Program summary

Program Title: PyFR

CPC Library link to program files: https://doi.org/10.17632/vmgh4kfjk6.1

Developer's repository link: https://github.com/PyFR/PyFR

Licensing provisions: BSD 3-clause

Programming language: Python (generating C/OpenMP, CUDA, OpenCL, HIP, Metal)

Nature of problem: Accurate and efficient scale-resolving simulation of industrial flows.

Solution method: Massively parallel cross-platform implementation of high-order accurate Flux Reconstruction schemes.