A High Performance Computing Approach to the Simulation of Fluid-solid Interaction Problems with Rigid and Flexible Components

This work outlines a unified multi-threaded, multi-scale High Performance Computing (HPC) approach for the direct numerical simulation of Fluid-Solid Interaction (FSI) problems. The simulation algorithm relies on the extended Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (XSPH) method, which approaches the fluid flow in a Lagrangian framework consistent with the Lagrangian tracking of the solid phase. A general 3D rigid body dynamics and an Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation (ANCF) are implemented to model rigid and flexible multibody dynamics. The twoway coupling of the fluid and solid phases is supported through use of Boundary Condition Enforcing (BCE) markers that capture the fluid-solid coupling forces by enforcing a no-slip boundary condition. The solid-solid short range interaction, which has a crucial impact on the small-scale behavior of fluid-solid mixtures, is resolved via a lubrication force model. The collective system states are integrated in time using an explicit, multi-rate scheme. To alleviate the heavy computational load, the overall algorithm leverages parallel computing on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cards. Performance and scaling analysis are provided for simulations scenarios involving one or multiple phases with up to tens of thousands of solid objects. The software implementation of the approach, called Chrono::Fluid, is part of the Chrono project and available as an open-source software.