High performance computing in coastal and hydraulic applications

Parallel computation of unsteady, free-surface flow applications are performed using stabilized finite element method. The finite element formulations are written for fix meshes and are based on the Navier-Stokes equations and an advection equation governing the motion of the interface function. To increase the accuracy of the method, an interface-sharpening/mass conservation algorithm is designed. The method has been implemented on the CRAY T3E and also IBM SP/6000 using the MPI libraries. We show the effectiveness of the method in simulating complex 3D costal and hydraulic applications such as flow in open channels, wave formation and wave interaction with ships in motion. Some simulations are performed on unstructured meshes with 200 million tetrahedral elements.