A Scalable Multiphysics Algorithm for Massively Parallel Direct Numerical Simulations of Electrophoresis

Abstract: In this article we introduce a novel coupled algorithm for massively parallel direct numerical simulations of electrophoresis in microfluidic flows. This multiphysics algorithm employs an Eulerian description of fluid and ions, combined with a Lagrangian representation of moving charged particles. The fixed grid facilitates efficient solvers and the employed lattice Boltzmann method can efficiently handle complex geometries. Validation experiments with more than $70\,000$ time steps are presented, together with scaling experiments with over ${4\cdot10^{6}}$ particles and ${1.96\cdot10^{11}}$ grid cells for both hydrodynamics and electric potential. We achieve excellent performance and scaling on up to $65\,536$ cores of a current supercomputer.