An efficient CPU-GPU implementation of the multiple absorption coefficient zonal method (MACZM)

Boutros Ghannam (1) , Maroun Nemer (1) , Khalil El Khoury (1) , Walter Yuen (2)

1 CEP/Paris
2 UC Santa Barbara - University of California [Santa Barbara]

The multiple absorption coefficient zonal method (MACZM) is an efficient radiative heat transfer modeling method in nonisothermal inhomogeneous media. The method is of high interest for dynamic applications because of its ability to asses semitransparent radiative heat transfer in very short computation time. In this work, an efficient algorithm for MACZM is implemented. A connectivity control study is presented for taking into account the connectivity considerations required by the method. An identified ray traversal algorithm corresponding to part of the MACZM implementation is then selected among three different approaches presented in the article, based on well-known ray traver sal algorithms, the 6-tripod line algorithm and the 6-parametric line algorithm. On the other hand, the MACZM is highly parallel and is implemented in CUDA, a parallel computing architecture that enables easy use of a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU). An efficient implementation is discussed consisting of an optimal solution for exploiting the method parallelism (threading) and the use of the memory resources available on the GPU. Speed-ups going from 300 to 600 times are achieved, using a NVIDIA Tesla C 1060 GPU and an Intel Xeon CPU E5507 at 2.27GHz. Radiative heat transfer is then simulated in a steel reheating furnace using the optimized GPU implementation. The computation time is further reduced by using a multigrid approach.

Mots clés: Absorption coefficients; Computation time; Control studies; Dynamic applications; Efficient implementation; GPU implementation; Graphics Processing Unit; Inhomogeneous media; Memory resources; Multigrid approach; Nonisothermal; Optimal solutions; Parallel computing architecture; Radiative heat transfer; Radiative heat transfer modeling; Reheating furnaces; Traversal algorithms; Zonal method; Algorithms; Computer graphics; Parallel architectures; Program processors; Radiative transfer; Computer graphics equipment

Domaines: Energétique

Boutros Ghannam, Maroun Nemer, Khalil El Khoury, Walter Yuen. An efficient CPU-GPU implementation of the multiple absorption coefficient zonal method (MACZM). Numerical Heat Transfer, Part B Fundamentals, 2012, 62 (6), pp.439-461. ⟨10.1080/10407790.2012.709418⟩. ⟨hal-00769602⟩