A multigroup diffusion solver using pseudo transient continuation for a radiation-hydrodynamic code with patch-based AMR

We present a scheme to solve the nonlinear multigroup radiation diffusion (MGD) equations. The method is incorporated into a massively parallel, multidimensional, Eulerian radiation-hydrodynamic code with Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR). The patch-based AMR algorithm refines in both space and time creating a hierarchy of levels, coarsest to finest. The physics modules are time-advanced using operator splitting. On each level, separate level-solve packages advance the modules. Our multigroup level-solve adapts an implicit procedure which leads to a two-step iterative scheme that alternates between elliptic solves for each group with intra-cell group coupling. For robustness, we introduce pseudo transient continuation (Psi tc). We analyze the magnitude of the Psi tc parameter to ensure positivity of the resulting linear system, diagonal dominance and convergence of the two-step scheme. For AMR, a level defines a subdomain for refinement. For diffusive processes such as MGD, the refined level uses Dirichlet boundary data at the coarse-fine interface and the data is derived from the coarse level solution. After advancing on the fine level, an additional procedure, the sync-solve (SS), is required in order to enforce conservation. The MGD SS reduces to an elliptic solve on a combined grid for a system of G equations, where G is the number of groups. We adapt the partial temperature scheme for the SS; hence, we reuse the infrastructure developed for scalar equations. Results are presented. We consider a multigroup test problem with a known analytic solution. We demonstrate utility of Psi tc by running with increasingly larger timesteps. Lastly, we simulate the sudden release of energy Y inside an Al sphere (r = 15 cm) suspended in air at STP. For Y = 11 kT, we find that gray radiation diffusion and MGD produce similar results. However, if Y = 1 NIT, the two packages yield different results. Our large Y simulation contradicts a long-standing theory and demonstrates the inadequacy of gray diffusion. Published by Elsevier Inc.