Add finite element or spectral element simulation capability #82
Labels
effort: very high
Requiring ≳2 weeks. Can this be split up into multiple smaller/focused issues?
feature request
Issues requesting a new feature or enhancement
plasmapy.formulary
Related to the plasmapy.formulary subpackage
Stale
Dormant issues & PRs which will be automatically closed if the label is not removed.
wish list 🌠
Desired but not planned features or improvements
Milestone
Finite difference methods work really well for a lot of problems, but there are some problems that they are not well suited for. Finite element and spectral element schemes have the advantage of considerable geometric flexibility, which makes them highly suitable for simulating toroidal confinement devices with round-ish/triangular-ish cross sections or otherwise non-trivial geometry. It would be great if we had finite element plasma simulation capabilities in addition to finite difference capabilities. I am sure we will need multiple methods since different methods will be most suitable for different problems (e.g., finite elements are not the greatest at capturing shocks).
It would be advantageous if we could build upon an existing package. Possibilities include (but are not limited to):
The package(s) that we use should have the following qualities:
We can also learn from existing really powerful plasma simulation codes that are written in Fortran, including:
Some of these codes can be used in Python via OMFIT, though I believe most or all of these codes and OMFIT require signing a user agreement form before getting access.
This is a very long term project, so this might be best saved until v0.2 or later.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: