A GPU accelerated three-dimensional ghost cell method with an improved implicit surface representation for complex rigid or flexible boundary flows

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient and reliable three-dimensional (3D) ghost cell method for complex rigid or flexible boundary flows. An improved implicit interface representation method is developed to treat the arbitrary complex interfaces including the thin or sharp boundaries. This method is robust and avoids the solving of a large dense matrix, and thus the computational efficiency is greatly enhanced. The ghost cell method with a unified eight-node interpolation scheme is adopted to enforce the no-slip boundary conditions on complex boundaries. To perform 3D high-resolution simulation on a desktop computer, a GPU parallel framework in CUDA environment is developed to significantly accelerate the computational efficiency of the present solver. The horizontal oscillations of a two-dimensional (2D) cylinder and a 3D sphere in the rest fluid are simulated to validate the accuracy and computational performance of the present model. Spatial accuracy of near second-order on the boundary treatment and good grid convergence are confirmed. Also, the present solver can achieve hundreds of acceleration ratios for 2D grids and thousands of acceleration ratios for 3D grids. Then, uniform flows around a 3D arbitrary rigid or flexible object such as a stationary cylindrical cylinder, a stationary square cylinder, an oscillating airfoil, and a swimming carangiform are simulated. The accuracy and capability of the present model for 3D complex geometries with large-amplitude movement or deformation is satisfactorily validated. Moreover, typical 3D wake structures are well captured.