Parallel domain decomposition method with non-blocking communication for flow through porous media

This paper introduces a domain decomposition method for numerically solving the Stokes equation for very large, complex geometries. Examples arise from realistic porous media. The computational method is based on the SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure Linked Equations) algorithm which uses a finite-differences approach for discretizing the underlying equations. It achieves comparable speed and efficiency as lattice Boltzmann methods. The domain decomposition method splits a large three-dimensional region into slices that can be processed in parallel on multi-processor computation environments with only minimal communication between the computation nodes. With this method, the flow through a porous medium with grid sizes up to 2048(3) voxel has been calculated. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc.