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Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware

Includes bibliographical references

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Clough, Duncan
Other Authors: Gain, James
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Computer Science 2014
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access_status_str Open Access
author Clough, Duncan
author2 Gain, James
author_browse Clough, Duncan
Gain, James
author_facet Gain, James
Clough, Duncan
author_sort Clough, Duncan
collection Thesis
description Includes bibliographical references
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/9206
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:34:20.437Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2014
publishDateRange 2014
publishDateSort 2014
publisher Department of Computer Science
publisherStr Department of Computer Science
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/9206 Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware Clough, Duncan Gain, James Kuttel, Michelle Mary Includes bibliographical references Fluid simulation is widely used in the visual effects industry. The high level of detail required to produce realistic visual effects requires significant computation. Usually, expensive computer clusters are used in order to reduce the time required. However, general purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) computing has potential as a relatively inexpensive way to reduce these simulation times. In recent years, GPUs have been used to achieve enormous speedups via their massively parallel architectures. Within the field of fluid simulation, the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) stands out as a candidate for GPU execution because its grid-based structure is a natural fit for GPU parallelism. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a GPU-based free-surface LBM fluid simulation. Broadly, our approach is to ensure that the steps that perform most of the work in the LBM (the stream and collide steps) make efficient use of GPU resources. We achieve this by removing complexity from the core stream and collide steps and handling interactions with obstacles and tracking of the fluid interface in separate GPU kernels. To determine the efficiency of our design, we perform separate, detailed analyses of the performance of the kernels associated with the stream and collide steps of the LBM. We demonstrate that these kernels make efficient use of GPU resources and achieve speedups of 29.6_ and 223.7_, respectively. Our analysis of the overall performance of all kernels shows that significant time is spent performing obstacle adjustment and interface movement as a result of limitations associated with GPU memory accesses. Lastly, we compare our GPU LBM implementation with a single-core CPU LBM implementation. Our results show speedups of up to 81.6_ with no significant differences in output from the simulations on both platforms. We conclude that order of magnitude speedups are possible using GPUs to perform free-surface LBM fluid simulations, and that GPUs can, therefore, significantly reduce the cost of performing high-detail fluid simulations for visual effects. 2014-11-05T03:57:35Z 2014-11-05T03:57:35Z 2014 Master Thesis Masters MSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9206 eng application/pdf Department of Computer Science Faculty of Science University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Clough, Duncan
Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
title_full Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
title_fullStr Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
title_full_unstemmed Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
title_short Lattice Boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
title_sort lattice boltzmann liquid simulations on graphics hardware
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9206
work_keys_str_mv AT cloughduncan latticeboltzmannliquidsimulationsongraphicshardware