GPU accelerated lattice Boltzmann model for shallow water flow and mass transport

A lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for solving the shallow water equations (SWEs) and the advection–dispersion equation is developed and implemented on graphics processing unit (GPU)‐based architectures. A generalized lattice Boltzmann equation (GLBE) with a multiple‐relaxation‐time (MRT) collision method is used to simulate shallow water flow. A two‐relaxation‐time (TRT) method with two speed‐of‐sound techniques is used to solve the advection–dispersion equation. The proposed LBM is implemented to an NVIDIA ® Computing Processor in a single GPU workstation. GPU computing is performed using the Jacket GPU engine for MATLAB ® and CUDA. In the numerical examples, the MRT‐LBM model and the TRT‐LBM model are verified and show excellent agreement to exact solutions. The MRT outperforms the single‐relaxation‐time (SRT) collision operator in terms of stability and accuracy when the SRT parameter is close to the stability limit of 0.5. Mass transport with velocity‐dependent dispersion in shallow water flow is simulated by combining the MRT‐LBM model and the TRT‐LBM model. GPU performance with CUDA code shows an order of magnitude higher than MATLAB‐Jacket code. Moreover, the GPU parallel performance increases as the grid size increases. The results indicate the promise of the GPU‐accelerated LBM for modeling mass transport phenomena in shallow water flows. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.