Publications

Massively parallel boundary integral element method modeling of particles in low-Reynolds number Newtonian fluid flows

Ingber, M.S.; Subia, S.R.; Mondy, L.A.

The analysis of many complex multiphase fluid flow systems is based on a scale decoupling procedure. At the macroscale, continuum models are used to perform large scale simulations. At the mesoscale, statistical homogenization theory is used to derive continuum models based on representative volume elements (RVEs). At the microscale, small scale features such as interfacial properties are analyzed to be incorporated into mesoscale simulations. In this research, mesoscopic simulations of hard particles suspended in a Newtonian fluid undergoing nonlinear shear flow are performed using a boundary element method. To obtain an RVE at higher concentrations, several hundred particles are included in the simulations putting considerable demands on the computational resources both in terms of CPU and memory. Parallel computing provides a viable platform to study these large multiphase systems. The implementation of a portable, parallel computer code based on the boundary element method using a block-block data distribution is discussed in this paper. The code employs updated direct-solver technologies that make use of dual-processor compute nodes.