A multi-thread parallel computation method for dynamic simulation of molecular weight distribution of multisite polymerization

• A multi-thread parallel computation method was proposed for the dynamic simulation of MWD for the multisite polymerization.
• Good performance was obtained to accelerate the dynamic simulation of MWD based on Flory method.
• Theoretical analysis on the speedup ratio and parallel efficiency was given to match software algorithm and hardware configuration.

Molecular weight distribution (MWD) is an important quality index of polymer products. Many methods have been proposed to dynamically simulate the MWD of polymerization, but these methods are normally designed for serial computations. In this paper, a multi-thread parallel computation method was proposed for multisite free-radical polymerization. Analysis of the relationship among different subtasks revealed a combined parallel strategy by fully exploiting the parallel feature of the process. A good performance was obtained to accelerate the dynamic simulation of MWD based on Flory method. We theoretically analyzed the speedup ratio (SR) and parallel efficiency (PE). Results showed that software algorithm and hardware configuration exhibited a good match. The efficiency of the proposed parallel method was presented through industrial slurry processes that used high-density polyethylene (HDPE).