Publication

Modeling & Simulation, Testing & Validation (MSTV)
2018

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING FRAMEWORK FOR CO-SIMULATION OF VEHICLE{TERRAIN INTERACTION

by Radu Serban; Nicholas Olsen; Dan Negrut

Abstract

Current modeling and simulation capabilities permit tackling complex multi-physics problems, such as those encountered in ground vehicle mobility studies, using high- delity physics-based models for all involved subsystems, including the vehicle, tires, and deformable terrain. However, these come at signi cant computational burden; research and development on new software architecture and paral- lelization techniques is crucial in enabling such predictive simulation capabilities to be useful in design of new vehicles or in operational settings. In this paper, we describe the architecture, philosophy, and implementation of a distributed message- passing-based granular terrain simulation capability and its incorporation into an explicit force{ displacement co-simulation framework to enable e ective simulation of multi-physics mobility prob- lems. We demonstrate that the proposed infrastructure has good parallel scaling characteristics and can thus e ectively leverage available computing resources. Furthermore, we show that the outer com- munication layer, also implemented with a message passing approach, is e ective and adds negligible overhead.