The DUNE-ALUGrid Module

TL;DR

The paper introduces the DUNE-ALUGrid module, a major update to the ALUgrid library integrated with DUNE, enhancing parallel performance, load balancing, and supporting complex grid types for scientific computing.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive overhaul of ALUgrid within DUNE, including new load balancing, parallel grid construction, and 3D tetrahedral grid features, improving efficiency and usability.

Findings

Enhanced parallel efficiency and reduced memory footprint.

Support for 3D tetrahedral grids with conforming refinement.

Improved usability for a broader range of problems.

Abstract

In this paper we present the new DUNE-ALUGrid module. This module contains a major overhaul of the sources from the ALUgrid library and the binding to the DUNE software framework. The main changes include user defined load balancing, parallel grid construction, and an redesign of the 2d grid which can now also be used for parallel computations. In addition many improvements have been introduced into the code to increase the parallel efficiency and to decrease the memory footprint. The original ALUGrid library is widely used within the DUNE community due to its good parallel performance for problems requiring local adaptivity and dynamic load balancing. Therefore, this new model will benefit a number of DUNE users. In addition we have added features to increase the range of problems for which the grid manager can be used, for example, introducing a 3d tetrahedral grid using a parallel newest vertex bisection algorithm for conforming grid refinement. In this paper we will discuss the new features, extensions to the DUNE interface, and explain for various examples how the code is used in parallel environments.