Fortran 90 programming with physical unit annotations

Abstract

Scientific computation aims to analyze and predict natural and engineered phenomena for human understanding. Specific quantification of physical variables requires annotations of physical units, either basic or derived. State-of-the-art computation uses the object-oriented programming (OOP) features using a number of processing cores. In translating scientific governing equations to computer programming, developers are still responsible to use and convert physical unitsto provide meaningful results. In this paper, we indicate some incoherency of SI units and propose possible ways to minimize unintended numerical errors. We use standard Fortran 90 as a programming language and discuss how physical units can be specified and checked during code compilations and executions.