Development of a parallel semi-implicit two-dimensional plasma fluid modeling code using finite-volume method

Abstract

In this paper, the development of a two-dimensional plasma fluid modeling code using the cell-centered finite-volume method and its parallel implementation on distributed memory machines is reported. Simulated discharge currents agree very well with the measured data in a planar dielectric barrier discharge (DBD). Parallel performance of simulating helium DBD solved by the different degrees of overlapping of additive Schwarz method (ASM) preconditioned generalized minimal residual method (GMRES) for different modeling equations is investigated for a small and a large test problem, respectively, employing up to 128 processors. For the large test problem, almost linear speedup can be obtained by using up to 128 processors. Finally, a large-scale realistic two-dimensional DBD problem is employed to demonstrate the capability of the developed fluid modeling code for simulating the low-temperature plasma with complex chemical reactions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.