Nektar++
Tensor product based finite element package designed to allow construction of low- and high-order solvers which can run efficiently on large HPC CPU and GPU platforms, allowing high-fidelity modelling of PDEs. Several application solvers (e.g. fluid dynamics) are included.
Description
Nektar++ is a tensor product based finite element package designed to allow one to construct efficient classical low polynomial order h-type solvers (where h is the size of the finite element) as well as higher p-order piecewise polynomial order solvers.
The framework comes with a number of solvers and also allows one to construct a variety of new solvers. Example solvers and tutorials on their use are documented in the Nektar++ user guide, available from the Documentation page.
Our current goals are to develop:
- Automatic auto-tuning of optimal operator implementations based upon not only h and p but also hardware considerations and mesh connectivity.
- Temporal and spatial adaption.
- Features enabling evaluation of high-order meshing techniques.
The framework currently has the following capabilities:
- Representation of one, two and three-dimensional fields as a collection of piecewise continuous or discontinuous polynomial domains.
- Segment, plane and volume domains are permissible, as well as domains representing curves and surfaces (dimensionally-embedded domains).
- Hybrid shaped elements, i.e triangles and quadrilaterals or tetrahedra, prisms and hexahedra.
- Both hierarchical and nodal expansion bases.
- Continuous or discontinuous Galerkin operators.
- Cross platform support for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Reference papers
- 1.Author(s): David Moxey, Chris D. Cantwell, Yan Bao, Andrea Cassinelli, Giacomo Castiglioni, Sehun Chun, Emilia Juda, Ehsan Kazemi, Kilian Lackhove, Julian Marcon, Gianmarco Mengaldo, Douglas Serson, Michael Turner, Hui Xu, Joaquim Peiró, Robert M. Kirby, Spencer J. SherwinPublished in Computer Physics Communications by Elsevier BV in 2020, page: 10711010.1016/j.cpc.2019.107110
- 2.Author(s): C.D. Cantwell, D. Moxey, A. Comerford, A. Bolis, G. Rocco, G. Mengaldo, D. De Grazia, S. Yakovlev, J.-E. Lombard, D. Ekelschot, B. Jordi, H. Xu, Y. Mohamied, C. Eskilsson, B. Nelson, P. Vos, C. Biotto, R.M. Kirby, S.J. SherwinPublished in Computer Physics Communications by Elsevier BV in 2015, page: 205-21910.1016/j.cpc.2015.02.008
Mentions
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- 2.Author(s): A. I. Liosi, P. Khurana, A. Swift, A. Chatzopoulos, F. Bottone, J. Hoessler, S. J. SherwinPublished in ERCOFTAC Series, Direct and Large Eddy Simulation XIV by Springer Nature Switzerland in 2026, page: 271-27710.1007/978-3-032-19268-4_41
- 3.Author(s): Henrik Wüstenberg, Spencer J. Sherwin, Joaquim Peiró, David MoxeyPublished in Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, Spectral and High-Order Methods for Partial Differential Equations ICOSAHOM 2023 by Springer Nature Switzerland in 2025, page: 419-43510.1007/978-3-031-76988-7_22
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- 3.Author(s): Alexandra I. Liosi, Henrik Wüstenberg, Parv Khurana, Spencer Sherwin, Julien Hoessler, Adam Swift, Athanasios ChatzopoulosPublished in AIAA SCITECH 2025 Forum by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 202510.2514/6.2025-1486
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