Managing complexity in massively parallel, adaptive, multiphysics applications

A new generation of scientific and engineering applications are being developed to support multiple coupled physics, adaptive meshes, and scaling in massively parallel environments. The capabilities required to support multiphysics, adaptivity, and massively parallel execution are individually complex and are especially challenging to integrate within a single application. Sandia National Laboratories has managed this challenge by consolidating these complex physics-independent capabilities into the Sierra Framework which is shared among a diverse set of application codes. The success of the Sierra Framework has been predicated on managing the integration of complex capabilities through a conceptual model based upon formal mathematical abstractions. Set theory is used to express and analyze the data structures, operations, and interactions of these complex capabilities. This mathematically based, conceptual modeling approach to managing complexity is not specific to the Sierra Framework—it is generally applicable to any scientific and engineering application framework.