Modeling Heat Conduction and Radiation Transport with the Diffusion Equation in NIF ALE-AMR

The ALE-AMR code developed for NIF is a multi-material hydro-code that models target assembly fragmentation in the aftermath of a shot. The combination of ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian) hydro with AMR (Adaptive Mesh Refinement) allows the code to model a wide range of physical conditions and spatial scales. The large range of temperatures encountered in the NIF target chamber can lead to significant fluxes of energy due to thermal conduction and radiative transport. These physical effects can be modeled approximately with the aid of the diffusion equation. We present a novel method for the solution of the diffusion equation on a composite mesh in order to capture these physical effects.