Parallel domain decomposition approach for large-scale three-dimensional boundary-element models in linear and nonlinear heat conduction

    Authors

    E. Divo; A. J. Kassab;F. Rodriguez

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Numer Heat Tranf. B-Fundam.

    Keywords

    BODIES; IMPLEMENTATION; Thermodynamics; Mechanics

    Abstract

    The boundary-element method (BEM) requires only a surface mesh to solve linear and nonlinear heat conduction problems, but the resulting matrix is fully populated. This poses serious challenges for large-scale three-dimensional problems due to storage requirements and iterative solution of a large set of nonsymmetric equations. In this article, we develop a domain decomposition, or artificial subsectioning technique, along with a region-by-region iteration algorithm particularly tailored for parallel computation to address these issues. A coarse-surface grid solution coupled with an efficient physically based procedure provides an effective initial guess for a fine-surface grid model. The process converges very efficiently, offering substantial savings in memory. The iterative domain decomposition technique is ideally suited for parallel computation. We discuss its implementation on a modest Windows XP Pentium P4 PC cluster running under MPI with MPI2 extensions. Results from three-dimensional BEM heat conduction models including models of upwards of 85,000 nodes arising form an intricate film-cooled vane. We demonstrate that the BEM can readily be applied to solve large-scale linear and nonlinear heat conduction problems and that such solutions can be readily undertaken on modest PC clusters.

    Journal Title

    Numerical Heat Transfer Part B-Fundamentals

    Volume

    44

    Issue/Number

    5

    Publication Date

    1-1-2003

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    417

    Last Page

    437

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000186299000001

    ISSN

    1040-7790

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