Pseudo—particle simulation of multi—scale heterogeneity in fluidization
Fluidization is a process of wide application, but its dynamic behavior is not well understood because of its multi-scale heterogeneity and regime multiplicity which are difficult to simulate in traditional numerical methods. By discretizing the fluid phase into a large number of interactive simple particles, which can incorporate many-body moving boundaries easily, pseudo-particle modeling (PPM) has reproduced reasonable radial and axial heterogeneity on macro-scale as well as solids clustering and fluid flows on meso- and micro-scales. The simulation suggests a consistent evolution of the complexity across different scales with itself serving as an ideal exploring tool.
In this paper, the authors identify the scalability bottlenecks of an unstructured grid CFD code (PETSc-FUN3D) by studying the impact of several algorithmic and architectural parameters and by examining different programming models. The authors discuss the basic performance characteristics of this PDE code with the help of simple performance models developed in their earlier work, presenting primarily experimental results. In addition to achieving good per-processor performance (which has been addressed in the cited work and without which scalability claims are suspect) they strive to improve the implementation and convergence scalability of PETSc-FUN3D on thousands of processors.