GPU-Accelerated Lattice Boltzmann Method for Shock Physics Computations

Lattice Boltzmann Methods (LBM) have seen considerable success in computational fluid dynamics, especially for incompressible flows. LBM's simple and highly parallelizable algorithm is well-suited for newer multi-threaded architectures such as GPUs. Despite theoretical limitations that present difficulties for LBM's feasibility in the compressible flow regime, recent advances have slowly pushed past this boundary and allowed for similar parallelizability and algorithmic efficiency for moderate supersonic flows that admit shock waves. In this work, we implement a GPU-accelerated LBM method that can resolve shocks at moderate Mach numbers. Through demonstration of example problems, we compare the computational performance of LBM to traditional shock physics solvers (that use Lagrangian deformations plus a re-map to the original grid). We find improvements in time-to-solution for the LBM methods, but we also explore further areas of research that could increase LBM's robustness for shock physics computations.