Multigrid lattice Boltzmann method for accelerated solution of elliptic equations

A new solver for second-order elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and the multigrid (MG) technique is presented. Several benchmark elliptic equations are solved numerically with the inclusion of multiple grid-levels in two-dimensional domains at an optimal computational cost within the LB framework. The results are compared with the corresponding analytical solutions and numerical solutions obtained using the Stone's strongly implicit procedure. The classical PDEs considered in this article include the Laplace and Poisson equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions, with the latter involving both constant and variable coefficients. A detailed analysis of solution accuracy, convergence and computational efficiency of the proposed solver is given. It is observed that the use of a high-order stencil (for smoothing) improves convergence and accuracy for an equivalent number of smoothing sweeps. The effect of the type of scheduling cycle (V- or W-cycle) on the performance of the MG–LBM is analyzed. Next, a parallel algorithm for the MG–LBM solver is presented and then its parallel performance on a multi-core cluster is analyzed. Lastly, a practical example is provided wherein the proposed elliptic PDE solver is used to compute the electro-static potential encountered in an electro-chemical cell, which demonstrates the effectiveness of this new solver in complex coupled systems. Several orders of magnitude gains in convergence and parallel scaling for the canonical problems, and a factor of 5 reduction for the multiphysics problem are achieved using the MG–LBM.