Issue |
A&A
Volume 590, June 2016
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A19 | |
Number of page(s) | 17 | |
Section | Numerical methods and codes | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201528060 | |
Published online | 29 April 2016 |
A smooth particle hydrodynamics code to model collisions between solid, self-gravitating objects⋆
1 Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 10, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
e-mail: ch.schaefer@uni-tuebingen.de
2 Department of Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstraße 17, 1180 Vienna, Austria
3 Physikalisches Institut, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Received: 29 December 2015
Accepted: 2 March 2016
Context. Modern graphics processing units (GPUs) lead to a major increase in the performance of the computation of astrophysical simulations. Owing to the different nature of GPU architecture compared to traditional central processing units (CPUs) such as x86 architecture, existing numerical codes cannot be easily migrated to run on GPU. Here, we present a new implementation of the numerical method smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) using CUDATM and the first astrophysical application of the new code: the collision between Ceres-sized objects.
Aims. The new code allows for a tremendous increase in speed of astrophysical simulations with SPH and self-gravity at low costs for new hardware.
Methods. We have implemented the SPH equations to model gas, liquids and elastic, and plastic solid bodies and added a fragmentation model for brittle materials. Self-gravity may be optionally included in the simulations and is treated by the use of a Barnes-Hut tree.
Results. We find an impressive performance gain using NVIDIA consumer devices compared to our existing OpenMP code. The new code is freely available to the community upon request.
Key words: methods: numerical / planets and satellites: formation
© ESO, 2016
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