Computational magnetohydrodynamics

Computational magnetohydrodynamics (CMHD) is a rapidly developing branch of magnetohydrodynamics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve electrically conducting fluids. Most of the methods used in CMHD are borrowed from the well established techniques employed in Computational fluid dynamics. The complexity mainly arises due to the presence of a magnetic field and its coupling with the fluid. One of the important issues is to numerically maintain the $\nabla \cdot {\mathbf B} = 0$ (conservation of magnetic flux) condition, from Maxwell's equations, to avoid any unphysical effects.

Open-source MHD codes

• Pencil Code
  Compressible resistive MHD, intrinsically divergence free, embedded particles module, finite-difference explicit scheme, high-order derivatives, Fortran95 and C, parallelized up to hundreds of thousands cores.
• Ramses GPU
  Ramses GPU is a MHD Code written in C++. It supports CUDA in order to run simulations on Graphics Cards by Nvidia. Static Gravity Fields are supported. Parallelization works. Different finite volume methods are implemented.
• Athena
  Athena is a grid-based code for astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). It was developed primarily for studies of the interstellar medium, star formation, and accretion flows.

Commercial MHD codes

• USim
• MACH2

See also

• Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
• Magnetic flow meter
• Plasma modeling

References

• Brio, M., Wu, C. C.(1988), "An upwind differencing scheme for the equations of ideal magnetohydrodynamics", Journal of Computational Physics, 75, 400–422.
• Henri-Marie Damevin and Klaus A. Hoffmann(2002), "Development of a Runge-Kutta Scheme with TVD for Magnetogasdynamics", Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 34,No.4, 624–632.
• Robert W. MacCormack(1999), "An upwind conservation form method for ideal magnetohydrodynamics equations", AIAA-99-3609.
• Robert W. MacCormack(2001), "A conservation form method for magneto-fluid dynamics", AIAA-2001-0195.

Further reading

• Toro, E. F. (1999), Riemann Solvers and Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics, Springer-Verlag.
• Ledvina, S. A.; Y.-J. Ma; E. Kallio (2008). "Modeling and Simulating Flowing Plasmas and Related Phenomena". Space Science Reviews 139. Bibcode:2008SSRv..139..143L. doi:10.1007/s11214-008-9384-6.

External links

• NCBI