An efficient GPU implementation for a faster simulation of unsteady bed-load transport

Computational tools may help engineers in the assessment of sediment transport during the decision-making processes. The main requirements are that the numerical results have to be accurate and simulation models must be fast. The present work is based on the 2D shallow water equations in combination with the 2D Exner equation. The resulting numerical model accuracy was already discussed in previous work. Regarding the speed of the computation, the Exner equation slows down the already costly 2D shallow water model as the number of variables to solve is increased and the numerical stability is more restrictive. In order to reduce the computational effort required for simulating realistic scenarios, the authors have exploited the use of Graphics Processing Units in combination with non-trivial optimization procedures. The gain in computing cost obtained with the graphic hardware is compared against single-core (sequential) and multi-core (parallel) CPU implementations in two unsteady cases.