Highly scalable numerical simulation of coupled reaction-diffusion systems with moving interfaces

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable finite element method for simulating coupled reaction-diffusion systems with moving interfaces, demonstrated through modeling magnesium corrosion, and evaluates its computational performance.

Contribution

It introduces a parallelized finite element model for coupled reaction-diffusion and moving boundary problems, with performance analysis on high-performance computing systems.

Findings

Model accurately simulates magnesium corrosion processes.

The computational approach demonstrates good weak and strong scaling.

Efficient high-performance implementation enables large-scale simulations.

Abstract

A combination of reaction-diffusion models with moving-boundary problems yields a system in which the diffusion (spreading and penetration) and reaction (transformation) evolve the system's state and geometry over time. These systems can be used in a wide range of engineering applications. In this study, as an example of such a system, the degradation of metallic materials is investigated. A mathematical model is constructed of the diffusion-reaction processes and the movement of corrosion front of a magnesium block floating in a chemical solution. The corresponding parallelized computational model is implemented using the finite element method, and the weak and strong scaling behaviors of the model are evaluated to analyze the performance and efficiency of the employed high-performance computing techniques.