OpenMP and CUDA Simulations of Sella Zerbino Dam Break on Unstructured Grids

This paper presents two 2D dam break parallelized models based on shallow water equations (SWE) written in conservative form. The models were implemented exploiting multicore PC systems and graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures under the OpenMP and the NVIDIA™’s compute unified device architecture (CUDA) frameworks. The mathematical model is solved using a finite-volume technique on an unstructured grid, with Roe’s approximate Riemann solver, a first-order upwind scheme. The upwind treatment of the source terms is implemented. A technique to cope with a wetting-drying advance front is adopted, together with the inclusion of the influence of source terms in the stability constraint in order to prevent negative water depths at the dry fronts. The proposed model is first applied to a laboratory test and then to a real dam break that occurred in Italy in 1935. Results on different grid sizes are compared to show the computing efficiency between the original sequential model and the parallelized models.