Parallelization Methodology and Performance Study for Level-Set-Method-Based Simulation of a 3-D Transient Two-Phase Flow

Abstract

A parallelization methodology which incurs minimum modifications in a serial code for two-phase flows is presented here. The domain is mapped over a distributed-memory parallel architecture using unidirectional domain decomposition, with overlapping boundary control volumes that communicate using MPI. Five different 3-D transient test cases are taken for code validation and to study the parallel performance on 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 processors. Parallel efficiencies ranging up to 99% are obtained. The property ratio of the fluids, their relative distribution over the domain, and phase-change solver module are found to influence parallel performance. Further, this study highlights the other bottlenecks encountered in parallel performance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The present work is part of a research project funded by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (India) under Project No. 2007/36/14-BRNS/718.

Notes

^a PVM, parallel virtual machine; MT, multithreading.

^a SS, strong scaling; WS, weak scaling; LS, level-set, VOF, volume-of-fluid; CLSVOF, coupled LS/VOF.

^a NS, Navier-Stokes solver; LS, level-set advection and re-initialization; EE, energy equation solver; PC, phase change related modules; ST, surface-tension source term.

^b Evaluated for N _p  = 16.