Verification of BOUT++ by the method of manufactured solutions
Journal article, 2016

BOUT++ is a software package designed for solving plasma fluid models. It has been used to simulate a wide range of plasma phenomena ranging from linear stability analysis to 3D plasma turbulence and is capable of simulating a wide range of drift-reduced plasma fluid and gyro-fluid models. A verification exercise has been performed as part of a EUROfusion Enabling Research project, to rigorously test the correctness of the algorithms implemented in BOUT++, by testing order-of-accuracy convergence rates using the Method of Manufactured Solutions (MMS). We present tests of individual components including time-integration and advection schemes, non-orthogonal toroidal field-aligned coordinate systems and the shifted metric procedure which is used to handle highly sheared grids. The flux coordinate independent approach to differencing along magnetic field-lines has been implemented in BOUT++ and is here verified using the MMS in a sheared slab configuration. Finally, we show tests of three complete models: 2-field Hasegawa-Wakatani in 2D slab, 3-field reduced magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in 3D field-aligned toroidal coordinates, and 5-field reduced MHD in slab geometry.

Author

Benjamin Dudson

University of York

Jens Madsen

Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

John Omotani

Chalmers, Physics, Subatomic and Plasma Physics

Peter Hill

University of York

Luke Easy

Culham Science Centre

University of York

Michael Løiten

Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

Physics of Plasmas

1070-664X (ISSN) 1089-7674 (eISSN)

Vol. 23 6 062303

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Energy

Roots

Basic sciences

Subject Categories

Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics

DOI

10.1063/1.4953429

More information

Latest update

11/22/2021