Dynamic coupling of grid-based multidisciplinary applications

The GRISSLi coupling interface is a runtime library designed for the coupled computation of grid-based multidisciplinary applications. Established simulation programs, which are devoted to a single discipline, can be interconnected to a complex simulation system via the GRISSLi coupling interface without recoding the participating programs. We introduce a data model to establish the links between the (dynamic) grids and the attached coupling values in a single application program and to establish the mappings between grids and coupling values among different application programs. The user-specified consistency model is realized using asynchronous communication based on the MPI message passing standard. Efficient communication is achieved by pre-computing an optimized communication schedule and overlapping communication with computation. Flexible coupling algorithms with adaptive grids and branches are supported in GRISSLi. We have developed a prototype implementation, which provides language bindings in ANSI C and Fortran, and runs currently on IBM RS/6000 SP, Gray T3E, SGI Origin/Octane and HP-V Class. We verify the functionality and evaluate the performance of our library using an industry relevant pilot application, the steel strip production process