Parallel performance of overlapping mesh technique for compressible flows

The paper presents parallelization of a blended-function-based overlapping mesh technique and its implementation in the case of inviscid compressible flows around complex geometries. The overlapping grid technique is based on the partition of the domain into overlapping subdomain. The solution in ea ch subdomain is obtained by an implicit algorithm and a characteristics-bas ed method, while the blended functions are implemented in order to allow th e accurate interpolation of the boundary conditions in the case of multiple overlaps. The above are applied to flows around multi-element airfoil geom etries and results from parallel computations on CRAY Server CS6400 and CRA Y T3E computing platforms are presented. The load-balancing and parallel pe rformance issues are investigated for several grid systems. A simple model has also been developed for describing the parallel efficiency of the simul ations and it is shown that the model results agree well with the parallel experiments. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.