CMSA Fluid Dynamics Seminar: Flexible spectral simulations of low-Mach-number astrophysical fluids

CMSA EVENTS

Speaker:

Keaton Burns - MIT

Fluid dynamical processes are key to understanding the formation and evolution of stars and planets.  While the astrophysical community has made exceptional progress in simulating highly compressible flows, models of low-Mach-number stellar and planetary flows typically use simplified equations based on numerical techniques for incompressible fluids.  In this talk, we will discuss improved numerical models of three low-Mach-number astrophysical phenomena: tidal instabilities in binary neutron stars, waves and convection in massive stars, and ice-ocean interactions in icy moons.  We will cover the basic physics of these systems and how ongoing additions to the open-source Dedalus Project are enabling their efficient simulation in spherical domains with spectral accuracy, implicit timestepping, phase-field methods, and complex equations of state.