Particle partitioning strategies for the parallel computation of solid-liquid flows

The numerical investigation of the interaction of large, solid particles with fluids is an important area of research for many manufacturing processes. Such studies frequently lead to models that are very large and require the use of parallel solution techniques. This paper presents the results of a parallel implementation of a serial code for the direct numerical simulation of solid-liquid flows. The base code is a serial, arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation of the equations of motion, which views that particles as solid bodies are embedded into the flow domain. This particular model poses some interesting difficulties for domain decomposition type approaches for parallel solutions. In particular, it is not fully understood how the partitioning of the particles among the subdomains influences the performance of parallel solvers. We present several strategies for the partitioning of the solid particles, focusing on the effectiveness of these techniques in terms of parallel speedup and efficiency.