CRPC-TR97686							February 1997

Title: Parallel Computing for Finite Element Models on Surface Water Flows

Authors: S. Chippada, C. Dawson, M. Martinez, M. Wheeler

Abstract:
Various sophisticated finite element models for surface water flow exist 
in the literature. Gray, Kolar, Luettich, Lynch and Westerink have 
developed a hydrodynamic model based on the generalized wave continuity 
equation (GWCE) formulation, and have formulated a Galerkin finite 
element procedure based on combining the GWCE with the nonconservative 
momentum equations (NCME). Numerical experiments suggest that this method 
is robust, accurate and supresses spurious oscillations which plague 
other models.

A simulator developed by Westerink et al, based on the GWCE-NCME 
formulation, has been parallelized to run on distributed memory parallel 
platforms. Speed-up efficiencies on clusters of workstations as well as 
on the Intel Paragon are presented.

We have analyzed a slightly modified Galerkin model which uses the 
conservative momentum equations (CME). For this GWCE-CME system of 
equations, we present an a priori error estimate.