A Heterogeneous Parallel Algorithm for Euler-Lagrange Simulations of Liquid in Supersonic Flow

Abstract

In spite of its prevalent usage for simulating the full-field process of the two-phase flow, the Euler–Lagrange method suffers from a heavy computing burden. Graphics processing units (GPUs), with their massively parallel architecture and high floating-point performance, provide new possibilities for high-efficiency simulation of liquid-jet-related systems. In this paper, a central processing unit/graphics processing unit (CPU/GPU) parallel algorithm based on the Euler–Lagrange scheme is established, in which both the gas and liquid phase are executed on the GPUs. To realize parallel tracking of the Lagrange droplets, a droplet dynamic management method is proposed, and a droplet-locating method is developed to address the cell. Liquid-jet-related simulations are performed on one core of the CPU with a GPU. The numerical results are consistent with the experiment. Compared with a setup using 32 cores of CPUs, considerable speedup is obtained, which is as high as 32.7 though it decreases to 20.2 with increasing droplets.

Keywords

• GPU acceleration
• parallel computing
• droplet dynamic management
• CPU/GPU hybrid computation