1.4 About the User's Guide

This User's Guide is designed to enable individuals unfamiliar with the FLASH code to quickly get acquainted with its structure and to move beyond the simple test problems distributed with FLASH, customizing it to suit their own needs. Code users and developers are encouraged to visit the FLASH code documentation page for other references to supplement the User's Guide.

Part I provides a rapid introduction to working with FLASH. Chp:Quickstart (Quick Start) discusses how to get started quickly with FLASH, describing how to setup, build, and run the code with one of the included test problems and then to examine the resulting output. Users unfamiliar with the capabilities of FLASH, who wish to quickly `get their feet wet' with the code, should begin with this section. Users who want to get started immediately using FLASH to create new problems of their own will want to refer to Chp:Creating new problems (Setting Up New Problems) and Chp:The FLASH configuration script (The FLASH Configuration Script).

Part II begins with an overview of both the FLASH code architecture and a brief overview of the units included with FLASH. It then describes in detail each of the units included with the code, along with their subunits, runtime parameters, and the equations and algorithms of the implemented solvers. Important note: We assume that the reader has some familiarity both with the basic physics involved and with numerical methods for solving partial differential equations. This familiarity is absolutely essential in using FLASH (or any other simulation code) to arrive at meaningful solutions to physical problems. The novice reader is directed to an introductory text, examples of which include

•         Fletcher, C. A. J. Computational Techniques for Fluid Dynamics (Springer-Verlag, 1991)
•         Laney, C. B. Computational Gasdynamics (Cambridge UP, 1998)
•         LeVeque, R. J., Mihalas, D., Dorfi, E. A., and Müller, E., eds. Computational Methods for Astrophysical Fluid Flow (Springer, 1998)
•         Roache, P. Fundamentals of Computational Fluid Dynamics (Hermosa, 1998)
•         Toro, E. F. Riemann Solvers and Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics, 2nd Edition (Springer, 1997)

The advanced reader who wishes to know more specific information about a given unit's algorithm is directed to the literature referenced in the algorithm section of the chapter in question.

Part VII describes the different test problems distributed with FLASH. Part VIII describes in more detail the analysis tools distributed with FLASH, including fidlr and sfocu.