The Battlefield Environment Division Modeling Framework (BMF). Part 2. Serial and Parallel Output Enhancements

Abstract : The treatment of input/output (IO) is critically important in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for scalable high-performance computing (HPC) and overall data longevity. The Battlefield Environment Division Modeling Framework (BMF) v0.90 was developed for the purpose of reducing source code complexity and development time by reducing repetitive, error prone or tedious operations in source code through the use of object-oriented program (OOP) design. Here we extend BMF to include IO functionality for serial and distributed compute configurations. The Atmospheric Boundary Layer Environment (ABLE) model has been built using BMF, and ABLE now uses the IO enhancements to BMF to enable serial and parallel output, and an output buffering mechanism using dedicated output processes. Using the parallel, buffered output features, ABLE performed lid-driven cavity flow simulations and shear instability simulations saving approximately 1 GB of model state and analysis data every output time step. There was no appreciable delay when comparing these output time steps to time steps with no output.