Ax=b: The Link between Gyrokinetic Particle Simulations of Turbulent Transport in Burning Plasmas and Micro-FE Analysis of Whole Vertebral Bodies in Orthopaedic Biomechanics

Mark Adams
Columbia University/PPPL

Applications of optimal unstructured elliptic linear solver methods - algebraic multigrid - are discussed from DOE and non-DOE applications. Work of the speaker in collaboration with members of the U.C. Berkeley Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory on large scale bone modeling calculations is presented. Accurate large deformation analysis of a whole vertebral body is shown with over a half a billion degrees of freedom and extremely geometrically complex domains. Parallel efficiencies of over 90% are demonstrated on the ASCI White machine at LLNL with up to 4088 processors - this work won a Gordon Bell prize in the special category in SC2004. Recent work of the speaker, in collaboration with scientists in the Center for Gyrokinetic Particle Simulation of Turbulent Transport in Burning Plasmas at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, is presented on the application of various linear solution methods to the scalar elliptic operators that arise in the field solve phase of gyrokinetic particle simulations.