A C++ expression system for partial differential equations enables generic simulations of biological hydrodynamics

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Abstract: We present a user-friendly and intuitive C++ expression system to implement numerical simulations of continuum biological hydrodynamics. The expression system allows writing simulation programs in near-mathematical notation and makes codes more readable, more compact, and less error-prone. It also cleanly separates the implementation of the partial differential equation model from the implementation of the numerical methods used to discretize it. This allows changing either of them with minimal changes to the source code. The presented expression system is implemented in the high-performance computing platform OpenFPM, supporting simulations that transparently parallelize on multi-processor computer systems. We demonstrate that our expression system makes it easier to write scalable codes for simulating biological hydrodynamics in space and time. We showcase the present framework in numerical simulations of active polar fluids, as well as in classic simulations of fluid dynamics from the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations to Stokes flow in a ball. The presented expression system accelerates scalable simulations of spatio-temporal models that encode the physics and material properties of tissues in order to algorithmically study morphogenesis. Graphicabstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number117
JournalThe European physical journal E, Soft matter
Volume44
Issue number9
Publication statusPublished - 23 Sept 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 34554349
ORCID /0000-0003-4414-4340/work/142252133