Interactive Large-Scale Soil Modeling Using Distributed High Performance Computing Environments

Abstract

The ability to visually interact with and guide a running simulation can greatly enhance understanding of both the nature of a numerical model and the characteristics of the underlying physical process. This article will discuss the development of a distributed, interactive modeling system capable of providing responsive visual feedback to user input. The system is built around a discrete element soil model being used to simulate the behavior of soil masses under large deformations. In designing this application to be interactively responsive to the user for soil masses of several hundred thousand particles, a range of technical problems were encountered, including the computational burden of the discrete element method (DEM), real-time visualization of large particle masses, and communication of data over large distances between heterogeneous resources using a variety of networks. This article will highlight how each of those obstacles was addressed and discuss the effectiveness of the final system.