A scalable multiphysics algorithm for massively parallel direct numerical simulations of electrophoretic motion

Abstract

We introduce a novel coupled algorithm for massively parallel direct numerical simulations of electrophoresis in microfluidic flows. This multiphysics algorithm employs an Eulerian description of fluid and ions, combined with a Lagrangian representation of moving charged particles. The fixed grid facilitates efficient solvers and the employed lattice Boltzmann method can efficiently handle complex geometries. Validation experiments with more than 70 000 time steps are presented, together with scaling experiments with over 4 × 106 particles and 1.96 × 1011 grid cells for both hydrodynamics and electric potential. We achieve excellent performance and scaling on up to 65 536 cores of a current supercomputer.