A scalable multiphysics algorithm for massively parallel direct numerical simulations of electrophoretic motion

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 70000 time steps are presented, together with scaling experiments with over 4 x 10(6) particles and 1.96 x 10(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. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.