Experimenting with the p4est library for AMR simulations of two-phase flows
For researchers in computational fluid dynamics, this work provides an assessment of p4est's usability and performance for AMR in two-phase flow simulations, but it is an incremental evaluation rather than a breakthrough.
The MARS project evaluates the p4est library for adaptive mesh refinement in parallel finite volume simulations of two-phase flows, demonstrating promising 3D results and load balancing performance.
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.