Solution of the 3-D Euler equations for the flow about a fighter aircraft configuration using a hypercube parallel processor

Abstract

The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code FL057, which solves the 3-D Euler Equations using an explicit, finite volume, Runge-Kutta algorithm, was implemented on an Intel IPSC-MX parallel processor. Spatial decomposition was effected on the solution grid about a fighter aircraft configuration and Binary Reflected Graycodes were used to map the computational domain onto the IPSC insuring nearest neighbor communication. Results and timings of the implementation are presented with a comparison of the IPSC and a uniprocessor machine of similar classification to assess the performance of the IPSC on FL057. Suggested improvements to the current version of the parallelized code are listed to aid load balancing, vectorization, and more efficient memory use.