Experimenting with the p4est library for AMR simulations of two-phase flows

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the p4est library's effectiveness for adaptive mesh refinement in simulating two-phase flows, focusing on performance, load balancing, and implementation ease, with initial 3D simulation results.

Contribution

It provides an assessment of p4est for AMR in two-phase flow simulations, highlighting its performance and usability in a parallel computing context.

Findings

p4est demonstrates promising load balancing in 3D simulations

The library is user-friendly for implementing adaptive mesh refinement

Initial 3D simulation results are encouraging

Abstract

Many physical problems involve spatial and temporal inhomogeneities that require a very fine discretization in order to be accurately simulated. Using an adaptive mesh, a high level of resolution is used in the appropriate areas while keeping a coarse mesh elsewhere. This idea allows to save time and computations, but represents a challenge for distributed-memory environments. The MARS project (for Multiphase Adaptative Refinement Solver) intends to assess the parallel library p4est for adaptive mesh, in a case of a finite volume scheme applied to two-phase flows. Besides testing the library's performances, particularly for load balancing, its user-friendliness in use and implementation are also exhibited here. First promising 3D simulations are even presented.