Comparison of Performances in a Structured and an Unstructured Fluid Dynamic Code
Abstract
For more than a decade, we have refined our multiphase flow algorithms to improve their speed, accuracy, and robustness [1]. These efforts have yielded a very general set of computational tools, named CFDLIB, which handle a wide variety of industrial and research multiphase-flow applications regardless of flow regime. We have recently generated a version of the code that uses an unstructured mesh of hexahedra to complement our earlier, block-strucured version, while using the same computational algorithm. We demonstrate the relative computational efficiencies of these two codes, through several fairly complicated test problems that use the same computational geometry and boundary and initial conditions. The computational overhead associated with block communication in the structured code is prohibitively expensive for geometries requiring a large number of logical blocks in the mesh, whereas the increased overhead associated with an unstructured mesh slows the computation of simpler problems. 1- Kashiwa, B.A., Padial, N.T., Rauenzahn R., and VanderHeyden, W.B. (1994) Numerical Methods in Multiphase Flows,FED-vol. 185, ASME.
- Publication:
-
APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- November 2000
- Bibcode:
- 2000APS..DFD.BE006P