Shared memorh parallelization for molecular dynamics simulations of non-spherical granular materials

摘要

Parallel threaded algorithms to speed up discrete-element simulation for granular matter are presented in this paper. Threads are a powerful tool for parallelization on shared-memory machines. First, a compact introduction to programming with threads will be given. Then an algorithm will be presented, which allows to determine neighborhood relations in polydisperse mixtures of particles of arbitrary shape, either discs, ellipses, or polygons. Another algorithm described here calculates the distance of two polygons in constant time, independent of the complexity of the shape of the polygons. This makes fast simulations of polygonal assemblies possible.