Chapter 9 Large-scale finite element modeling and parallel computation of sediment transport in coastal areas

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter describes a finite element parallel model that is largely based on the Wai and Lu's parallel mode (WLPM). The Gauss-Jacobi iteration method (GJI) is used in WLPM for intermediate size problems, and the preconditioned conjugate gradient method (PCG) is suggested for solving large-scale finite element linear systems. The performance of the parallel model is running on a low-cost Beowulf distributed computer system. The parallel computing is a relatively new science. The parallel model is developed for large-scale simulations of flow and sediment transport processes in coastal waters. The domain decomposition method is implemented to decompose a large modeled area into smaller sub domains so that calculations involved in each sub-domain is carried out quickly and efficiently by a separate processor. With a low-cost PC-based Beowulf multiple instruction multiple data (MIMD) machine, the master processor is responsible to read the initial grids and boundary information and to partition the entire modeled area into a number of sub-domains. The sub-domain information is sent to each slave processor to perform the computation.