[CIG-SHORT] Short-Term Crustal Dynamics priorities - mesh generation

[Carl W. Gable]

RE: mesh generation

Brad and community,

I'm interested in community feedback both in terms of CIG priorities but 
also, if people have feedback for me it will help me focus what I bring 
to the table at the Golden workshop in June. Comments welcome.

It is my impression that mesh generation for systems with complex 
geometry is still a steep hurdle for many people doing short-term 
crustal dynamics.

I would like to try to help people overcome these hurdles in any way I 
can. For me this means development of methods and algorithms for LaGriT. 
I do not advocate LaGriT as 'the' solution, just the solution in which I 
have experience and expertise and can offer something to the community.

Up to now I have produced various demo meshes and made them available to 
the community ( http://meshing.lanl.gov/proj/#Crustal_Dynamics_open ) 
and created output file structures specifically for PyLith and Geofest.

A recent addition to LaGriT that should be available by the time of the 
workshop is the ability to read/write netCDF format files. This is a 
more general exchange format and it allows one to read a mesh produced 
by Cubit into LaGriT for modification and/or setting of IC and BC.

I believe the problem of meshing the SCEC CFM (community fault model) is 
solved, but the steps are rather difficult and require a lot of tweaking.

Rather than saying 'this is what the community needs' I would ask the 
questions:

Do people want mesh generation:
A) That is easier to use for simple problems
or
B) New algorithms for solving complex problems (non-manifold geometry, 
mesh quality improvement).
or
C) More demo problems relevant to crustal dynamics
or
D) Data structures and algorithms that are efficient for very large 
problems (10 million - 100 million element).
or
E) something else ?

My contributions have been supported by SCEC but not CIG. Are there 
wants/needs that I could contribute to and the community wants? If 
possible, I would do them without CIG resources. If there are larger 
software development efforts in this area, could/should CIG resources ($ 
or people) be used for that development?

Cheers,
Carl

Brad Aagaard wrote:
> Hi all:
> 
> The Science Steering Committee will be meeting in two weeks to update the CIG 
> five-year rolling strategic plan. At this meeting, I will present our 
> priorities for software development by CIG. I have created two pages on the 
> CIG website to document our desires 
> (http://www.geodynamics.org/cig/workinggroups/short/workarea/planning/priorities2008/). 
> One page is devoted to development plans for PyLith while the other describes 
> our priorities year-by-year over the next five years. All content posted on 
> these pages is up for discussion.
> 
> Some questions to help organize your thoughts:
> 
> (1) What obstacles inhibit your abilities to create realistic models?
> (2) What modeling tools would eliminate/reduce these obstacles?
> (3) If you are using PyLith, what features do wish it had?
> (4) If you are not using PyLith, why? Are you waiting for a particular set of 
> features to be added? Is it too difficult to learn? Is it too slow? Is it too 
> inefficient?
> (5) Are you satisfied with the pace of PyLith development? Would you be 
> willing to work on PyLith development? What sort of training (if any) would 
> you need?
> (6) What other types of modeling tools, besides PyLith, do we want developed?
> (7) Are there useful semi-analytic codes that would be of great use if they 
> were more portable? documented? open-source? more efficient? Should we divert 
> resources from PyLith development to support this task?
> 
> Please help define our needs and prioritize them for the coming years by 
> participating in this discussion. Send comments/suggestions to this mailing 
> list or visit the pages at the link above and add comments. NOTE: If you 
> respond directly to me with suggestions/comments, I will forward your 
> comments to this mailing list!
> 
> If you are interested in participating in a 1 hour teleconference towards the 
> end of next week (May 21-23) to finalize this list of priorities, please let 
> me know what times on those days you are available.
> 
> Thanks,
> Brad
> _______________________________________________
> CIG-SHORT mailing list
> CIG-SHORT at geodynamics.org
> http://geodynamics.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cig-short


-- 

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Dr. Carl W. Gable, Staff Scientist
EES-6, MS T003
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos NM 87545

gable at lanl.gov     Voice 505-665-3533     Fax   505-665-8737
http://www.ees.lanl.gov/staff/gable     http://lagrit.lanl.gov

Hydrology, Geochemistry & Geology Group (EES-6)
Focus: Geophysics, Hydrology, Mesh Generation
Correspondence / TSPA
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