No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2018
I have investigated the effects of including a more realistic cooling law in SPH simulations of accretion discs. In order to improve the efficiency of the simulations, I have used Strang operator splitting, and I have developed a method of timestep control which guarantees the accuracy and stability of the simulations.
Strang splitting (Strang, 1968) is used to numerically solve a differential equation where the differential operator is split into two or more parts. This scheme is appropriate for any such equation, but is applied most effectively in cases where one part of the equation has a different timescale to the rest, or is somehow more difficult to solve or less stable.