Large-scale three-dimensional phase-field simulations for phase coarsening at ultrahigh volume fraction on high-performance architectures

• Published in: Modelling and simulation in materials science and engineering Vol. 24; no. 5; pp. 55016 - 55029
• Main Authors: Yan, Hui, Wang, K G, Jones, Jim E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 13.06.2016
• Subjects: Cahn-Hilliard equation; coarsening kinetics; parallel computing implementation; phase-field simulations; scalability; speed-up; time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation
• ISSN: 0965-0393; 1361-651X
• DOI: 10.1088/0965-0393/24/5/055016

A parallel algorithm for large-scale three-dimensional phase-field simulations of phase coarsening is developed and implemented on high-performance architectures. From the large-scale simulations, a new kinetics in phase coarsening in the region of ultrahigh volume fraction is found. The parallel implementation is capable of harnessing the greater computer power available from high-performance architectures. The parallelized code enables increase in three-dimensional simulation system size up to a 5123 grid cube. Through the parallelized code, practical runtime can be achieved for three-dimensional large-scale simulations, and the statistical significance of the results from these high resolution parallel simulations are greatly improved over those obtainable from serial simulations. A detailed performance analysis on speed-up and scalability is presented, showing good scalability which improves with increasing problem size. In addition, a model for prediction of runtime is developed, which shows a good agreement with actual run time from numerical tests.