This month in AvaFrame - January 2021 edition
+January 30, 2021
+ + +Welcome to the first instalment of our monthly update of 2021. This month we +started getting into the nitty-gritty of our dense flow module’s numerical +implementation:
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To facilitate and improve our development we added new test cases. This time +they are more geared towards testing specific numerical issues and more targeted +issues, concentrating for now on the dense flow module com1DFAPy.
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flat plane: a pile of sand (i.e. particles with coulomb friction) +on a flat plane. The pile should or should not move depending on the +steepness of the sides of the pile
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inclined slope: similar to the previous, a pile of sand (coulomb +friction again) flowing down an inclined plane. This test enables comparison +to a solution described in +Savage-Hutter 1993 +in which the depth and velocity profiles can be determined in an analytical +form.
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(rotated) pyramid: generation routines to produce a, potentially rotated +and/or shifted, pyramid with a release area at the top of the pyramid. This +allows for checking of rotational symmetry, among others.
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We are currently looking at and analysing how to place the initial particles +and what effect this has further along the simulation.
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Getting into the numerical development also means the compute times start to +play a role. We moved some parts of the code over to Python to improve the +computation efficiency of the python dense flow kernel. We are starting to +profile our python code (pudb and cProfile for those interested).
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For general analysing with ana3AIMEC: after some deliberation we decided to +move the (arbitrary) starting point of our runout calculation to the top of +the main avalanche profile (instead of some point further down the profile). +See our definitions for this in the glossary. +If this makes you internally scream in agony because we got it all wrong, feel +free to contact us!
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We have a ton of minor changes which however improve usability quite a lot. That means +mundane (some might say boring) things like enabling underscores in input names, +consistent naming of result variables, extended export capabilities (more +time steps), and many more.
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Bringing AvaFrame to the Windows world is also currently high on our +priority list. We explored options on the best ways to install and maintain an +AvaFrame installation on as many Windows versions as possible. Expect some +exciting news on this one in the next few weeks.
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As you can see, we are off to a good start this year! As always please contact +us with any questions or issues you have!
+Felix
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