Scalability studies and large grid computations for surface combatant using CFDShip-Iowa

Abstract

Scalability studies and computations using the largest grids to date for free-surface flows are performed using message-passing interface (MPI)-based CFDShip-Iowa toolbox curvilinear (V4) and Cartesian (V6) grid solvers on Navy high-performance computing systems. Both solvers show good strong scalability up to 2048 processors, with V6 showing somewhat better performance than V4. V6 also outperforms V4 in terms of the memory requirements and central processing unit (CPU) time per time-step per grid point. The explicit solvers show better scalability than the implicit solvers, but the latter allows larger time-step sizes, resulting in a lower total CPU time. The multi-grid HYPRE solver shows better scalability than the portable, extensible toolkit for scientific computation solver. The main scalability bottleneck is identified to be the pressure Poisson solver. The memory bandwidth test suggests that further scalability improvements could be obtained by using hybrid MPI/open multi-processing (OpenMP) parallelization. V4-detached eddy simulation (DES) on a 300 M grid for the surface combatant model DTMB 5415 in the straight-ahead condition provides a plausible description of the vortical structures and mean flow patterns observed in the experiments. However, the vortex strengths are over predicted and the turbulence is not resolved. V4-DESs on up to 250 M grids for DTMB 5415 at 20° static drift angle significantly improve the forces and moment predictions compared to the coarse grid unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes, due to the improved resolved turbulence predictions. The simulations provide detailed resolution of the free-surface and breaking pattern and vortical and turbulent structures, which will guide planned experiments. V6 simulations on up to 276 M grids for DTMB 5415 in the straight-ahead condition predict diffused vortical structures due to poor wall-layer predictions. This could be due to the limitations of the wall-function implementation for the immersed boundary method.