Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics in pkdgrav3 for Shock Physics Simulations. I. Hydrodynamics
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We present pkdgrav3 , a high-performance, fully parallel tree smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code designed for large-scale hydrodynamic simulations including self-gravity. Building upon the long development history of pkdgrav , the code combines an efficient hierarchical tree algorithm for gravity and neighbor finding with a modern implementation of SPH optimized for massively parallel hybrid CPU/GPU architectures. Its hybrid shared/distributed memory model, combined with an asynchronous communication scheme, allows pkdgrav3 to scale efficiently to thousands of CPU cores and GPUs. We validate the numerical accuracy of pkdgrav3 using a suite of standard tests, demonstrating excellent agreement with analytic or reference solutions. The code was already used in several peer-reviewed publications to model planetary-scale impacts, where SPH’s Lagrangian nature allows for accurate tracking of material origin and thermodynamic evolution. These examples highlight pkdgrav3 ’s robustness and efficiency in simulating highly dynamical, self-gravitating systems. pkdgrav3 thus provides a powerful, flexible, and scalable platform for astrophysical and planetary applications, capable of exploiting the full potential of modern heterogeneous high-performance computing systems.
Source: The Astrophysical Journal
Language: English
Subfield: Computational Mechanics
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,499
OpenAlex ID: W4417049776
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