Tecolote: An Object-Oriented Framework for Hydrodynamics Physics

Tecolote is an object-oriented framework for both developing and accessing a variety of hydrodynamics models. It is written in C++, and is in turn built on another framework - Parallel Object-Oriented Methods and Applications (POOMA). The Tecolote framework is meant to provide modules (or building blocks) to put together hydrodynamics applications that can encompass a wide variety of physics models, numerical solution options, and underlying data storage schemes, although with only those modules activated at runtime that are necessary. Tecolote has been designed to separate physics from computer science, as much as humanly possible. The POOMA framework provides fields in C++ to Tecolote that are analogous to Fortran-9O-like arrays in the way that they are used, but that, in addition, have underlying load balancing, message passing, and a special scheme for compact data storage. The POOMA fields can also have unique meshes associated with them that can allow more options than just the normal regularly-spaced Cartesian mesh. They also permit one-, two, and three-dimensions to be immediately accessible to the code developer and code user