A direct Schur-Fourier decomposition for the solution of the three-dimensional Poisson equation of incompressible flow problems using loosely coupled parallel computers

摘要

Parallel computers based on PC-class hardware (Beowulf clusters) provide a matchless computing power per cost unit. However, their network performance tends to be too low for standard parallel computational fluid dynamics (CFD) algorithms. A relevant example is the solution of the Poisson equations. The subject of this article is a direct Schur-Fourier decomposition (DSFD) algorithm that, for certain three-dimensional flows, produces an accurate solution of each Poisson equation with just one message, providing speed-ups of at least 24 in a low-cost PC cluster with a conventional network and 36 processors. Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of turbulent natural convection flow is used as a benchmark problem. [References: 35]