2008/08/13 by Elizabeth J. Tasker, R. Brunino, Riccardo Brunino +9
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Algorithm #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Blast wave #Classical mechanics #Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aerodynamics #Computer science #Eulerian path #Gadget #Lagrangian #Mechanics #Physics #Shock (circulatory) #Shock wave #Smoothed-particle hydrodynamics #Statistical physics #Suite #Supernova #Theoretical physics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13836.x
18 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2008/08/13 · openalex publication_date 2008/10/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We test four commonly used astrophysical simulation codes, enzo, flash, gadget and hydra, using a suite of numerical problems with analytic initial and final states. Situations similar to the conditions of these tests, a Sod shock, a Sedov blast, and both a static and translating King sphere, occur commonly in astrophysics, where the accurate treatment of shocks, sound waves, supernovae explosions and collapsed haloes is a key condition for obtaining reliable validated simulations. We demonstrate that comparable results can be obtained for Lagrangian and Eulerian codes by requiring that approximately one particle exists per grid cell in the region of interest. We conclude that adaptive Eulerian codes, with their ability to place refinements in regions of rapidly changing density, are well suited to problems where physical processes are related to such changes. Lagrangian methods, on the other hand, are well suited to problems where large density contrasts occur and the physics are related to the local density itself rather than the local density gradient.