Parallel Processing of Eulerian-Lagrangian, Cell-based Adaptive Method for moving Boundary Problems.

Abstract

In this study, issues and techniques related to the parallel processing of the Eulerian-Lagrangian method for multi-scale moving boundary computation are investigated. The scope of the study consists of the Eulerian approach for field equations, explicit interface-tracking, Lagrangian interface modification and reconstruction algorithms, and a cell-based unstructured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) in a distributed-memory computation framework. We decomposed the Eulerian domain spatially along with AMR to balance the computational load of solving field equations, which is a primary cost of the entire solver. The Lagrangian domain is partitioned based on marker vicinities with respect to the Eulerian partitions to minimize inter-processor communication. Overall, the performance of an Eulerian task peaks at 10,000-20,000 cells per processor, and it is the upper bound of the performance of the Eulerian- Lagrangian method. Moreover, the load imbalance of the Lagrangian task is not as influential as the communication overhead of the Eulerian-Lagrangian tasks on the overall performance. To assess the parallel processing capabilities, a high Weber number drop collision is simulated. The high convective to viscous length scale ratios result in disparate length scale distributions; together with the moving and topologically irregular interfaces, the computational tasks require temporally and spatially resolved treatment adaptively. The techniques presented enable us to perform original studies to meet such computational requirements. Coalescence, stretch, and break-up of satellite droplets due xvii to the interfacial instability are observed in current study, and the history of interface evolution is in good agreement with the experimental data. The competing mechanisms of the primary and secondary droplet break up, along with the gas-liquid interfacial dynamics are systematically investigated. This study shows that Rayleigh-Taylor instability on the edge of an extruding sheet can be profound at the initial stage of collision, and Rayleigh-Plateau instability dominates the longitudinal disturbance on the fringe of the liquid sheet at a long time, which eventually results in primary breakups.