Efficient Simulation of Fluids

Abstract

Fluid simulation is based on Navier-Stokes equations. Efficient simulation codes may rely on the smooth particle hydrodynamic toolbox (SPH), a method that uses kernel density estimation. Many variants of SPH have been proposed to optimize the simulation, like implicit incompressible SPH (IISPH) or predictive-corrective incompressible SPH (PC-ISPH). This chapter recalls the formulation of SPH and focuses on its effective parallel implementation using the Nvidia common unified device architecture (CUDA), while message passing interface (MPI) is another option. The key to effective implementation is a dedicated accelerating structure, and therefore some well-chosen parallel design patterns are detailed. Using a rough model of the ocean, this type of simulation can be used directly to simulate a tsunami resulting from an underwater earthquake.