The features and use of a spectrally based numerical model designed to provide approximate
solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations for density-stratified fluids in a rotating reference
frame will be presented. The code is freely available and is intended for use as a tool for
process oriented simulations of stratified fluid flow, in particular for nonlinear interactions
between internal gravity waves and transitional processes and instabilities resulting in
disordered, three-dimensional motions. For our purposes here, we refer to this latter class
of flows as turbulent. The algorithm is designed to be run on distributed memory
multiprocessor computers using a data-parallel programming paradigm. Within the practical
limits of memory and speed on the various platforms, the model can be run on machines
ranging from Macintosh laptop computers, to workstation clusters, to large-scale community
resources such as the Cray T3E.
The code itself is portable and easy to configure for real problems via simple user-defined functions
for initial conditions and time dependent forcing. Sub-models include a spectrally based
Lagrangian particle tracker and auxilliary passive tracers. In this talk I will present some of
the numerical techniques underlying the model, show results illustrating the types of
problems that can be addressed using the model and demonstrate the ease of configuration
for a study of stability of quasi-horizontal vortex motions. |
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