Validation of the 3D AMR SIP-CESE Solar Wind Model for Four Carrington Rotations

We carry out the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) implementation of our solar-interplanetary space-time conservation element and solution element (CESE) magnetohydrodynamic model (SIP-CESE MHD model) using a six-component grid system (Feng, Zhou, and Wu, Astrophys. J. 655, 1110, 2007; Feng et al., Astrophys. J. 723, 300, 2010). By transforming the governing MHD equations from the physical space (x,y,z) to the computational space (xi,eta,zeta) while retaining the form of conservation (Jiang et al., Solar Phys. 267, 463, 2010), the SIP-AMR-CESE MHD model is implemented in the reference coordinates with the aid of the parallel AMR package PARAMESH available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/paramesh/. Meanwhile, the volumetric heating source terms derived from the topology of the magnetic-field expansion factor and the minimum angular separation (at the photosphere) between an open-field foot point and its nearest coronal-hole boundary are also included. We show the preliminary results of applying the SIP-AMR-CESE MHD model for simulating the solar-wind background of different solar-activity phases by comparison with SOHO observations and other spacecraft data from OMNI. Our numerical results show overall good agreements in the solar corona and in interplanetary space with these multiple-spacecraft observations.