Hybrid parallel simulations of fluid flows in complex geometries: Application to the human lungs

Abstract

In this paper a hybrid parallel strategy dedicated to the simulations of fluid flows in complex geometries by means of Lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) is introduced. The approach allows coping with platforms sharing both the properties of shared and distributed architectures and relies on spatial domain decomposition where each sub-domain represents a basic block entity which is solved on a symmetric multi-processing (SMP) system. Main emphasis is placed on testing its realization and studying its efficiency on a realistic fluid flow problem with a highly complex geometry. Therefore, as a suitable problem the simulation of the expiration in the human lung, whose functionality is described by a dedicated two-scale model, is considered. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.